


Calling, Calling Home

by WeOnlyEattheUglyOnes



Category: The Expanse (TV)
Genre: Drama & Romance, F/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 37
Words: 81,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25733992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeOnlyEattheUglyOnes/pseuds/WeOnlyEattheUglyOnes
Summary: Nik and the other orphans that lived in the shadows on Tyco station are about to lose their home to progress. Amos takes an interest in helping them and gets the crew of the Roci pulled into their drama. Does Amos save Nik or is it the other way around?
Relationships: Amos Burton/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 33
Kudos: 91





	1. Prolong and Chapter 1

Prolog

Nestled in her bed under multiple blankets to keep warm, Niki could hear her parents’ quiet conversation in the other room. Like most young children, she quickly picked up on the strain in their voices and they argued.

“We can’t just leave her hear by herself. What if she wakes up while we’re gone? She’s only seven, she wouldn’t understand,” her mother’s usual melodious tone was absent, replaced by sharply clipped consonants.

“She’ll be fine. We won’t be gone long. She’ll never know we were even gone,” her dad’s voice had dropped into the soothing pattern he used when he was trying to convince someone to do something they didn’t want to do. He used it on Niki often, mostly to get her to eat the odd food here on Tyco Station.

“I just don’t like it, Jon. It just doesn’t feel right. Why would this specialist want to see the two of us so late?”

“I don’t know, but we both need to get tested. One of us might be a match to her. If it keeps her from getting worse, it’s worth the risk. We owe it to her to try.”

“Or we could just go back to Mars and turn ourselves in. She’d be fine there.”

“Without her family?”

“Better than her dying,” her mother’s voice rose in pitch.

“Shush, you’ll wake her up. Come on, Jess. Let’s just go and get this over with. We’ll be back in just a little while and maybe we will have some answers.”

“Ok, but I’m still worried.”

Their voices faded as they moved towards the door to their cramped rooms. The pressure change that came with the opening of the outer door made her ever-present headache throb more. Niki sniffed quietly and lay still, hoping the pain would let up soon. Ever since they left Mars, headaches had been her constant companion. At first, her parents thought it was just a slow acclimation to zero gravity. But as weeks passed and the headaches didn’t respond to any medication and she started to have chills and nausea, they brought her here to Tyco Station to see a specialist. Niki didn’t like the man. He was always poking and prodding her, and he never smiled. Her old doctor on Mars was a happy woman who smiled a lot and gave her candy at the end of each visit. This doctor didn’t have any candy.

After the door closed behind them, the pressure in the room equalized and her headache subsided to the familiar throbbing at the back of her skull. For a little while, Niki laid awake staring at the little bedside lamp shaped like a dolphin, waiting for her parents to come back, but her eyes finally grew heavy and she drifted off to sleep.

****

Everything was quiet when Niki woke up. Sitting up in bed, she rubbed her eyes and blinked the sleep out of them.

“Ama?”

The only response was the hiss of the air recycler.

“Babba?”

Still no answer.

Her stomach rumbled with hunger. She was normally hungry and could eat first thing in the morning, before the nausea stole her appetite.

Niki crawled out of her bed and stood unsteadily. The low gravity of the space station was better than the weightlessness of space, but still significantly less than that of her home world, so it took a moment for her inner ears to align themselves to her new vertical orientation. She looked over to their bed, but it was still neatly made from the day before. On spindly legs, she went out into the common room.

“Ama? Babba?”

Neither of her parents were there, nor were they in the only remaining room of their temporary home, the bathroom. Niki sniffled and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her sleep shirt. She had never been left alone for more than a few minutes and didn’t know what to make of the situation.

When her stomach rumbled again, she went over to the cabinet that held a few packets of food they had brought with them from Mars. All the packets had easy to understand pictures on them, so she was able to pick out her favorite, a mushroom based chili that wasn’t too spicy. Before she turned away, though, her dark eyes fell on the last bag of candy. Made from real chocolate, it was a rich treat that her parents doled out sparingly. Clutching the chili to her chest, Niki looked at the bag, then at the closed front door. Making up her mind, she dropped the chili and grabbed the candy. Sitting on the floor in front of the cabinet, she opened the bag and stuffed a chocolate into her mouth, then another. Before long, the bag was empty. Glancing around guiltily, she shuffled over to the recycler and pushed the bag through its opening, her ears popping as it was sucked out of her hands and disappeared.

The day wore on slowly as Niki waited for her parents to come home. She watched some of her favorite shows and played games on the old handheld that her parents let her use, but once the headaches and nausea hit in force, she just curled up on the lumpy chair in the main room and dozed off and on. Sometime late in the afternoon, gave up and crawled back into her bed and cried herself to sleep.

Her parents weren’t home the next morning when she woke up either. Niki ate the chili from the day before, then put on her favorite outfit. She was going to go find her parents.

At the door, she stretched out on her tiptoes to reach the keypad and punched the numbers just like she always saw her parents do, but since she didn’t know the code, the door remained shut. Frustrated, she tried again with no results.

"Ama! Babba!” she cried beating her little fists against the unmoving door. “Ama! Babba!”

But her parents didn’t return to her that day. Or the next two days. On the fourth day, Niki ate the last packet of food in the cabinet. She went hungry the next day.

The next day, she was laying listlessly in her bed when she heard the door open and voices.

“Ama?” she called out weekly.

“What the sabaka that?” an unfamiliar male voice asked. “There isn’t supposed to be anyone here.”

“I don’t pashang know. I was told the family skipped station without paying for the rooms.”

“This place stinks. It’s going to take forever to get rid of the smell…” the speaker trailed off as he stepped into the doorway of the bedroom. “Shit! There’s a little kid in here!”

The other man peered around him, “Im mal. Call medical.” He pushed his way into the room. “Kowlting gonya gut, Bébé, we get you help.”

Chapter 1

Nik weaved through the crowd that packed the central concourse, her diminutive frame not making a ripple in the flow of people around her. She had picked out their marks, a couple of guys sitting at Wang’s counter just being served their meal. In a break in the crowd, she spotted Lucky on the other side of the pair and his twin, Hopper further away.

Hopper gave them the all clear signal and the game was on. There was a loud wail of a young child out on the concourse. They always used Mouse as their distraction even though she was the youngest because she was also the loudest. Plus, she was slower than Nik and Lucky.

Lucky slipped in beside his target, a dark-haired in a drab gray jumpsuit and made a grab for his meal while his attention was focused on the noise Mouse was making. He had almost disappeared into the crowd when the man noticed his theft.

“What the hell!” he yelled, standing to go after the boy.

His younger, blonde companion, also in a gray jumpsuit, reached out to stop him, “Let the kid go. It’s not worth it. Just buy another one.”

That was the opening Nik needed. She darted in and snatched his meal off the counter, her hands quickly tucking the hot container covered by a film into her jacket. She spun around to make her escape but was stopped by a large hand wrapped around her thin arm. She looked over her shoulder and met the man’s eyes. Instead of anger, they were filled with only a mild interest, like he had discovered something not entirely unexpected. The look made her more uncomfortable than any anger would have. She was used to anger, along with disdain and occasionally pity, and could handle it. This made her want to run and hide.

Before she lost her nerve under his unblinking stare, she kicked out, connecting with his unprotected shin. He barely flinched. He held her eyes for a brief moment more, then deliberately opened his hand, releasing her. Nik turned and ran, disappearing into the crowd with the food.

Nik ran until she reached the dead-end corridor where the grating was pulled loose from the floor slightly. Only then did she slow down and check behind her to make sure neither of the men had followed her.

Once she had determined it was safe to proceed, she nudged the grating aside and crawled into the opening, pulling it closed behind her. The piping and cable run extended ten yards past the end of the corridor and emptied out into an open utility area that connected to other hidden runs, tunnels, and crawl spaces that formed a web inside the station. Most were used to access the infrastructure for maintenance and upkeep, but many, like this one, were so infrequently used that they might as well have been abandoned.

This was where she and the others called home. This was where they felt safe.


	2. Chapter 2

In the utility area, there was an arrhythmic tapping like ductwork flexing with temperature changes: tap-tap, tap, tap-tap-tap-tap. One of the twins was letting her know they were in the clear.

“Oye,” she called out softly, “I’m good.”

The three children crept out from their hiding spots behind cables and supports.

“We thought they had you good,” Lucky pulled out the meal he had stolen and sat down on the floor. His twin brother, Hopper, flopped down beside him.

“Na, Mi gut,” she shrugged. “He let me go.” She sat down near them and Mouse, the youngest, sat beside her. She carefully peeled the film off the container and handed it to the girl before licking the film clean.

“Why he do that?”

She shrugged again, “Mi na sasa. Im Inya. Who knows why they do anything?”

They sat in silence for a bit while they devoured the food. Mouse ate half of the portion then handed it back to Nik. When she finished, she let the little girl lick the container clean. The twins dug eagerly into their food at the same time, racing to see who could eat more. Wang’s served a better-quality food than some of the other vendors where they prowled. After the food was gone, they sat back and enjoyed the memory; the food feeding them twice, first physically then again mentally.

Nik played absently with the pendent secured to her wrist by a broken chain and several colorful strands of string. A small globe of gray glass no bigger than her thumbnail, it was the only remaining item from her previous life. Originally a necklace, her mother had given it to her during their voyage from Mars to Tyco Station, telling her that the color matched her eyes. She sometimes questioned why she kept it, since it reminded her of her mother, who had abandoned her as a child. But she couldn’t bring herself to give it up. It was the only connection she had to her former life.

Her attention was drawn back to the conversation when the talk turned to the station.

“A lot of people out there,” Hopper looked over at Nik.

“Ya, there’s something going on. Lot of Inners. Lots of bosmang.”

“What they here for?”

“Something bout the future of the station. That’s all I could git.”

“It don’t matter. Life for us here be the same,” Lucky sighed.

Hopper nodded his agreement, “Not nobody care bout a bunch of orphans.”

“We better off without them, anyway,” Lucky added.

Mouse leaned against her to capture her attention.

"Lookie what I found,” she held up a doll that was just missing one leg and had a rag wrapped around it. 

“Cool,” Nik told her, then the smell reached her, and she made a sour face. “Oh, Mouse, she stinks. Where you get her?”

“Recycling.”

“In a trash pile?”

The girl nodded proudly.

“Well, I’m not sharing a bed with either of you smelling like this.” Nik stood up. “Come on. Let’s go to the atmo scrubbers and get cleaned up.”

“Can I take my doll?”

“She needs cleaning too.”

Clutching her new doll, Mouse stood to follow her.

“You coming?” she asked the twins.

Hopper sniffed his arm, “I don’t stink,” he pronounced.

“Me either,” his twin added.

“Ok,” she smiled. “Why don’t you go out and see what you hear bout what’s going on?”

Always up for a challenge, the twins nodded eagerly and climbed to their feet.

“Meet here later?” she asked.

“Kay,” they answered in unison.

Nik and Mouse left the area by a different route than they entered, winding through the narrow spaces behind the walls of the station, making their way deeper into the structure until they reached one of the smaller atmospheric scrubbers. A few weeks ago,   
Nik had installed a water bypass line, hidden in the cables that routed power to the unit, that ended in a nearby alcove. There, she ended the line with a small valve that could be manually turned on or off as needed. Reaching behind one of the beams that ran vertically along the wall, she found the tiny sliver of soap she had saved from being recycled.

“Ok, go strip,” she instructed the girl.

Solemnly, Mouse handed her the doll and pulled off her clothes. Nik passed her the soap and turned on the valve. The trickle of tepid water from the small pipe wasn’t much, but it was enough to wash with. She stood watch while Mouse bathed and then rinsed some of the grime out of her ragged clothes. Lastly, she handed the doll back to the girl for her to wash off. When Mouse was through, she put her wet clothes back on, shivering with the chill.

“My turn, then we dry,” Nik promised.

Mouse stood watch while she stripped quickly out of her own clothes; drab brown pants and shirt with an old jacket that used to be green, but was gray with age and stains, over everything. The shapeless clothes hid the slight curves on her twenty-four-year-old body. Only when she was naked could anyone tell she wasn’t the pre-teen child she pretended to be. The illness from her childhood combined with chronic malnutrition had not only stunted her growth, limiting her height to less than that of the eleven-year-old twins she ran with, but had also stripped her frame of any excess flesh.

She had been running with the twins for a couple of years now and, even though they knew she was a girl, they had assumed she was only a couple years older than them. It was the only reason they trusted her. She might be able to maintain the lie for another year, maybe two, but sooner or later Lucky and Hopper would start wondering why she wasn’t aging. Over the past seven years, this had been a recurring problem, usually solved by the children she ran with growing up enough to get jobs on ice haulers or as dock workers. Occasionally, they would just disappear. 

Only once had her secret been discovered, when she had been grabbed while stealing food near a brothel. The brothel owner had thought to cash in on selling what he thought was a pre-pubescent girl and had been shocked to discover he just had a scrawny woman on his hands. Before he could process how to exploit her, she had bashed him over the head with a vase and was scrambling for the exit. After that incident, she made a point of avoiding the brothels and ensuring the children she ran with did the same.

Once she and her clothes were as clean as she could get, she led Mouse around to the discharge vent of the scrubber. Together they stood in the warm air stream until their clothes were mostly dry. Using her fingers to comb the worst of the tangles from Mouse’s hair, she braided it for the little girl and tied it with a strip of cloth torn from an old rag, then did the same for herself.

They took a different route to exit the tunnels and reenter the main concourse of the station. Together, they worked the food kiosks scattered along the broad corridor. All the vendors and regulars in this area were used to the four children scavenging for food. A few saved scraps for them. Most, though, barely scraped by themselves and kept the leftovers for their own families. These vendors wasted no time in chasing the children away from their customers. The few tidbits of food Nik scavenged from discarded trays and containers she passed to Mouse. The child was going through a growth spurt and was always hungry. Occasionally, she scored enough to eat a bite or two herself.

As they moved from vendor to vendor, Nik caught snippets of conversations, picking up news and the latest gossip.

“No new jobs coming in….”

“…trying to convince them to invest in upgrades…”

“Everyone in a hurry to leave the system…”

“Just leave it all to the damn inners…”

“…Johnson and Holden trying to negotiate turning it over…”

“Tons of scrap that could be used to start over…”

With growing alarm, Nik learned that the ongoing discussions were about decommissioning the aging station and whether to repurpose it in whole or in part or demolish it. The opinions of the crowd seemed to be split depending on their loyalties. Inners wanted it demolished, giving belters one less place in the system to call home. Martians wanted to demolish it and make use of the parts in their never-ending quest to terraform their home world. Belters wanted it turned over to them for various uses because they are the ones that built and manned it. Many had never set foot off its sprawling structure.

The hair on Nik’s neck prickled unexpectantly. She was used to moving through the throng or people unnoticed so the sensation of being watched was an uncomfortable experience. Not slowing her progress around a cluster of dock workers, she pulled Mouse closer to her and glanced over her shoulder. Just a few meters away, the Inner from lunch leaned casually against a support column, watching her with the same disconcerting stare. His arms were crossed over his broad chest, the rolled-up sleeves of his jumpsuit revealing well-muscled arms. When their eyes met, he nodded briefly to her left directing her eyes to another man that was tracking her.

While the attention of the stranger in the gray coveralls was unsettling, this man alarmed her. She had seen him before, usually near the brothels that her and the other children took care to avoid. His dirty purple jacket was pulled tight across his bulging stomach and his undershirt was unbuttoned to show off the fake gold chains around his beefy, tattooed neck. He was circling the dock workers in the opposite direction that she and Mouse were moving.

“We gotta go,” Nik told Mouse softly.

The little girl had only been with them for three months, but she was a fast learner. Nik’s quiet statement changed her demeanor immediately. She went from the uninterested shuffle of a bored child to alert and ready to run.

“When I say, run in Gilly’s and out the back. Go to level three and hide behind the hydroponics.”

Mouse nodded her understanding.

“You know what to do if you’re grabbed.”

Mouse nodded again.

Three more steps and Nik let go of her little hand. “Go!”

Without hesitation, Mouse ran through the dock workers, coming out opposite of where Nik stood. When the man in the purple jacket didn’t move to follow her, Nik spun and ran in the opposite direction.


	3. Chapter 3

“Thief! She stole my handheld!” the cry rose behind her. People around her suddenly took notice of her passage and a couple reached out to detain her. Nik deftly dodged them and kept running. There was a broken panel on the outside of an abandoned maintenance elevator shaft down the next corridor off the main concourse. If she could reach it ahead of him, she was small enough to get through it, but he wouldn’t be able to follow.

With the man still yelling “thief!” behind her, she zig-zagged to avoid a pair of reaching hands but lost some of the distance between her and her pursuer. She could hear his labored breathing close behind her. Picking up her pace, she grabbed the corner and used the momentum of her flight to turn and propel her into the narrow service corridor. The panel was fifty meters down the dimly lit, littered passageway, but it was straight with no obstacles, so she should gain a little ground on the larger man behind her.

Nik slid to an abrupt halt. Halfway down the corridor between her and her intended escape hatch, was a tall, thin man holding a piece of pipe.

“Gotcha, koyo!” he grinned and pointed the pipe at her.

She spun around only to see her pursuer lumbering into the corridor, pinning her between them in the narrow space. Nik turned and put her back to the wall so that she could see both men and frantically considered her options.

“Didn’t see that coming, did you?” the fat man huffed.

He didn’t seem to have a weapon, but his bulk took up almost all the space between the walls. Still, she might be fast enough to get by him. It was a better chance than trying to get past the skinny man and his pipe.

She tensed up, getting ready to make a run for it.

“Hey, Kid, you ok?”

Fat man spun around to confront a third man that had just entered the corridor. It was the Inner she had stolen lunch from.

“This isn’t your business, welwala. Get you gone!”

The Inner shrugged, “maybe not, but I’m not leaving without her.”

“You like little kids, ówala? Is that it?” Skinny man called out from the other side of her. Fatty snickered.

“No, but you look like you do.”

Without warning, the Inner punched Fatty in the gut, doubling him over, then spun him and slammed him headfirst into the wall.

“Pashang!” Skinny yelled and ran towards the two, waving his pipe like a club.

As he passed Nik, she stuck out her foot, tripping him. Instead of falling to the floor, he stumbled and caught himself against the opposite wall. Pushing himself back upright, he swung the pipe and caught Nik across the cheek with the jagged end. Pain exploded across her face as she was spun by the momentum of the blow and dropped onto the floor into a pile of trash. Skinny kicked her in the stomach.

“Stay down, koyo! We’ll take care of you later!”

Nik barely heard his steps as he ran to help his friend as she struggled to catch her breath and not throw up her lunch. Blood dripped off her face, puddling on the floor under her. Bracing her hands on the sticky floor her fingers touched the smooth metal of another piece of pipe. Wrapping her hand around it, she pushed herself to her feet, stooping slightly from the pain in her midsection.

The scuffle had ceased behind her and she turned to face the victor. The Inner stood over the prone bodies of her assailants. At her movement, he turned his intense gaze to her. He clenched and unclenched his fists and stepped away from them, towards her.

“You’re bleeding,” he stated blandly and took another step.

She stepped backwards and raised the pipe, “stay back.”

He raised his hands, palms out, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

He took another step. Nik took two steps back, nearly stumbling over a pile of debris. She glanced down quickly and when she looked back up, the Inner was only an arm’s length away. She grasped the pipe in both hands, holding it like a club.

“Step back or I will bash your head in.”

He tipped his head to the side, “you can try.” His voice never changed from the bland calmness. He might as well have been ordering food or a drink. Nothing about him was overtly threatening, but every instinct she had was screaming at her to run.

Nik swung the pipe at his head, and he snatched it from her with no effort and tossed it to the floor behind him. She scrambled back quickly to get out of his reach. He started after her but paused at a noise from Fatty behind him.

“You broke my nose, fucker!”

Not looking back at Fatty, he pointed at her, “don’t run off.” Then he turned back to the big man pushing himself up off the floor.

“Psst! Nik!”

She turned and looked down the corridor. Hopper was hanging half out of the opening to the elevator shaft.

“Come on, Nik!” he beckoned.

Nik didn’t hesitate. Running to the opening, she swung first one leg, then the other over the edge. Before she slipped in, she looked back. The Inner was standing over Fatty, holding him up by a grip on his shirt, hitting him repeatedly in the face. The man paused with his bloody fist pulled back for another blow and met her eyes. Even in the act of beating the crap out of someone, his eyes were calm, and his breathing was normal.

She swallowed nervously and let her body slip the rest of the way through the opening, away from that stare. Hopper replaced the panel behind her.

“Who the hell was that?” he asked.

She shrugged, “just some crazy Inner koyo. Let’s go get mouse.”

“She’s with Lucky.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

Together, they started the climb down the shaft to level three. Just a few meters down, the cover was pulled off the opening and a head poked through the small opening. Though it was backlit, and she couldn’t make out his features, Nik knew it was the Inner.

“Hey!” he yelled down the shaft.

“Keep going,” she told Hopper quietly.

“Hey!” The yell was louder and more urgent.

Nik concentrated on her hand holds and ignored him.

“Damnit!” There was a fleshy thud against the side of the shaft.

“Almost there,” Hopper called up to her.

A few more minutes and they both reached the point where a utility tunnel intersected the shaft. The opening was opposite the side they were climbing down, but someone had tied abandoned cables across the gap. Nik hated this part. She wasn’t afraid of   
heights, but she really didn’t like dangling over a drop hundreds of meters down on cables as old as the deteriorating station.

Hopper didn’t have any reservations. Hand over hand, he crossed in a matter of seconds. At the tunnel, he turned and looked back at Nik.

“Come on, Nik. Don’t be a scaredy.”

Taking a breath, she grabbed the cable over her head and swung out over the open shaft. Quickly, she worked her way across, only slightly slower than the boy. Once on the other side, they crawled through the cramped tunnel until they reached a maintenance tunnel. Before long, they were back at the utility hub they called home.

“Ouch!” Lucky said looking at her face. Now that the rush of adrenalin was past, it was starting to throb painfully.

“How bad is it?”

Lucky stepped closer and stood on his toes to get a closer look. “Im mal. I think you need to go see Crazy Maggie.”

“Oh, no. It’s not that bad. Keyá?”

His brother stepped up to have a look. “He’s right. I can see the bone. It’s really gross.”

The pain made her grit her teeth, but that sent a stab of pain through her entire head. When she could see something besides stars again, she blew out an exasperated breath, “Damnit.”

A tug at her jacket made her look down. Mouse held out her tattered doll.

“You can take Mini with you, if you want,” she offered.

Nik knelt by the child. “Taki, setara mali. That’s really nice. But you keep her. I might lose her out there.”

Mouse hugged the doll close and nodded solemnly.

“Maggie always has candy. I’ll bring you back a piece. Ok?”

The girl nodded vigorously and smiled, “kay.”

“Us too?” Lucky tapped her on the shoulder and Hopper looked hopeful.

“Soyá,” she replied, turning to go to the niche behind a pipe rack that held the bed she and Mouse shared. Kneeling on the tattered mat that served as their mattress, she pulled out a rolled up rag tucked in between two pipes. Unrolling it, she surveyed the odds and ends that she had stashed: a tarnished silver bell with a winged figure for a handle, a bright red rubber ball with only a small chunk of the rubber missing, a real feather with a bent shaft, a hand full of pretty rocks, and a shiny gold key. None held any value to her, but they were useful when bartering with children and some of the residents that lived on the fringes of society on the station.

She tucked the bell into a pocket and carefully rolled up the rest of the trinkets before returning them to their hiding place. Leaving the niche, she made her way to a different access tunnel.

“Keep an eye on Mouse, guys.”

“Sure.” “Kay.” Both boys replied.

Nik patted Mouse on the head as a goodbye and disappeared down the tunnel.


	4. Chapter 4

Crazy Maggie was a well-known resident to the children of the station. Once, she had worked in the medical bay as a nurse until she had been caught stealing medication. The doctor didn't care that she was using the meds to treat the poor that couldn't afford to come to the bay and those that couldn't for other, less savory reasons.

The children called her crazy not because of her appearance; her hair tangled and matted, one of her eyes clouded and blind from an untreated cataract, and her multiple layers of brightly colored clothes; or the fact that her cramped quarters were crammed full of every manner of item one could imagine. The adults called her a hoarder, but to the children it was a wondrous place to explore. No, the children called her crazy because she was always carrying on a conversation with herself.

When Nik scratched at her door, she could hear her inside, talking.

“Damnit, Maggie, you're always putting stuff where you can't find them later. I know I put it somewhere over here with the logs from 42.”

The rambling ceased momentarily at her scratch before starting up again.

“Hoya, we have a visitor, Maggie, and we didn't make any scones or tea. Oh, well, they're early so they'll just have to do without.”

There was scuffling on the other side of the door, followed by a thud and a muttered curse, before the door opened.

aggie peered at her intently with her one good eye, “ah, it's little Niki. Come in, mali mi, come in.”

s the woman shuffled away, Nik entered and shut the door behind her. In the dim lighting, she followed Maggie deeper into the room. Boxes and containers of all shapes and sizes were stacked up against the walls, making the space more crowded. Some of the stacks reached to the ceiling and leaned precariously. One stack had finally given way to the low gravity of the station and the boxes were in a jumbled heap spilling into the open space, some of their contents pouring out onto the floor. Nik paused at one to look, but all it contained were reams of film and cellulose paper. She wondered what was on them to make them important enough to keep.

Scattered among the stacks of boxes were various shelves and cabinets, full of all kinds of interesting things. Nik-naks and trinkets, jars full of marbles, shells, dirt in different colors and textures. It was a child's dreamworld.

Maggie continued her conversation with herself as she made her way to a cluttered desk at the back of the room.

“It's been years since Niki came for a visit, surely we have something special for her. I know I have something here. Where did I put it? Damnit, Maggie! You're always losing my things.”

“Maggie?” Nik tried to catch her attention.

“Ah-ha! Here it is,” Maggie twittered with triumph, spinning around with a rumpled wrapper clutched in her hand. “I've been saving this for a special occasion. Here, mali mi.”

Nik took the offered treat. It was the remains of a chocolate flavored bar. A rare treat indeed.

She smiled at Maggie, grimacing slightly when the movement made her cheek throb. “Taki, Maggie.”

“Oh, dear,” Maggie frowned, just noticing the jagged cut on her face. “What happened?”

“Got cornered by that dzhemang that hangs out around the brothels.”

“That fat, sweaty one with all the chains?”

“Ya, and his skinny kopeng.”

Maggie shook her head, “they're bad news. You stay away from them, hear?”

Nik wasn't going to explain so she just nodded her understanding, “mi sasa. I will.”

“Let's take a look. Sit.” Maggie pulled out a rolling stool that was missing a wheel and Nik balanced on it. Pulling a desk lamp closer, the former nurse leaned in and examined her face.

“Oh, Bébé, this is deep. I'm going to have to clean it good before I can close it. This is going to hurt.”

Nik nodded again, “go ahead.”

While she was working on Nik's face, Maggie talked constantly, sometimes to Nik, but mostly to herself. Despite her warning, Maggie had numbed the area before starting and, though it still hurt, it wasn't as bad as she had feared. She let her eyes roam the room.

“Maggie,” she interrupted at one point, “what's in all the boxes?”

Maggie's hands paused at their task as she considered her answer.

“When my Pete and I first started up the med bay here, the computer systems were unreliable. All this,” she waved her hand over their heads,” was still under construction, so we lost power on a regular basis. Made keeping records a pain in the ass, it did.”  
She went back to work on Nik's face as she continued, “so we started downloading all the files every night to cellulose. Later, we switched to film.” She shrugged, “it became habit and we continued even after construction. We did it every night for over thirty years.”

“But, why is it all here?”

“After I was kicked out, nobody bothered with it anymore. Then that fancy new doctor wanted the space, so they was going to throw it all out. Imagine, throwing all this away?”

“So, you took it?”

“What you think I am? A thief?” Maggie drew back and spat on the floor. “I'm not a thief. Maggie's not a thief. What's the harm in trying to help people? No, no harm at all. Everything I borrowed was outdated and expired and due to be recycled. They just didn't want to understand. They wanted me out. I'd been out here too long. I'm not loyal to Mars or Earth anymore. I'm loyal to the people on this spinning hunk of metal.”

She lapsed into a sullen silence. Nik reached out and rubbed her arm soothingly.

“I don't think you're a thief, Maggie. That's not what I meant.”

Maggie shook her head as if clearing away the dark thoughts, “I know. You're a good girl, taking care of all those children all these years. I remember when you first came to the station. You were such a little thing and so sick. Your parents had no business bringing you out here.”

Maggie scooted closer to finish closing the cut, but Nik grabbed her hands, “You know me?”

“Of course, child,” Maggie tutted. “I treated you many times those first weeks you were here. I also treated you when you were brought in half starved. I remember everyone I've helped over the years.”

Nik's hands shook, “did you know my parents?”

“Didn't I just say that?”

“Do you know what happened to them?”

“No, child, I was off the week they went missing. By the time I came back to work, it was all over and you had disappeared. It wasn't until I saw you running with a pack of young ones a couple years later that I learned you were still on the station. Now, sit still and let me finish.”

Nik sighed with disappointment but released Maggie's hands and let her go back to work. A few minutes later, she leaned back to survey her handiwork.

“There. All done. It's going to leave a scare, but you were never a looker anyway.” She pushed away from the desk and stood up. “Wanna see?”

Nik nodded with her fist. Mirrors were not something they ran into a lot in the maintenance and utility spaces behind the walls of the station. Reflections off polished surfaces and poly-glass was the closest thing they had to mirrors.

Maggie disappeared into the other room and Nik could hear her muttering to herself as she looked for a mirror.

“Ah-ha! You just thought you could hide it!” she cackled happily.

“Here you go, Niki,” she shuffled back into the room and handed over the flat rectangle.

It was old and slightly clouded, but big enough for her to see her entire face in it. Large, gray eyes dominated her thin face. Her skin was pale but blemish free except for a couple smudges of dirt and the angry wound that reached from her cheek bone into her hairline above her left eyebrow. Her nose was sharp and narrow, slightly turned up at the tip, her lips thin on her wide mouth. Her dark hair, pulled back and braided down her back, was dark brown and greasy from not being thoroughly washed in years.

Maggie was right, she wasn't pretty at all, but it really didn't bother her. Children really didn't care about looks unless one was grotesquely ugly or deformed.

“Not too bad, if I do say so myself. And I do, don't I, Maggie?” the older woman twittered behind her.

Nik shrugged and handed her back the mirror, “táki, Maggie. Here,” she reached into her pocket, “I brought something for you.”

She held the bell out and Maggie picked it up.

“Nice. Nice. I don't have one like this, do I Maggie?” she said to herself as she held it under the light. “This is real silver, I think. Let's see,” her dialog continued as she dug around for something.

“Maggie,” Nik said to her back. “Maggie?”

“Hum? What is it, child?” she said distractedly, not even turning around.

“Thanks for the help. I'm going to let myself out, kay?

“Yeah, you run along. Don't be a stranger, child. Come back and see me sometime. Bring those others with you, if you want.”

“Soyá,” Nik replied, but Maggie wasn't paying her any attention. She was back to talking to herself, having an argument about the metal the bell was made of. Nik let herself out, shutting the door behind her. On her way back to the others, she replayed what Maggie had said over and over, something that she said just didn't feel right. It wasn't until much later that she remembered what it was.

“By the time I came back, it was over...”


	5. Chapter 5

A week later, with all the extra people gone, life was back to normal on Tyco Station. The decision had been made about the fate of the station and Nik had a new crisis to deal with. The station was going to be decommissioned and they were going to lose their home. Granted it would be months, maybe years before they were forced to leave, but with no families and no one they trusted, their future was bleak.

During that week, Hopper and Lucky kept Nik updated on what was going on. The Inner that had helped her was prowling around, apparently looking for her. The twins made a game of trailing him to keep track of his location and baiting him. Being twins made it easy; they just had to dress alike, not hard since everything they had was gray and dingy. They brought her stories daily about their tricks and his growing frustration. But by the end of the week, even he had left the station.

“Oye, Nik. Look what we scored,” Lucky grinned at her as he and Hopper approached. The two boys were struggling to carry a large, damaged piece of equipment between them. They dropped in on the floor at her feet with a clang.

Nik stood, her eyes wide with alarm, “Kaka felota! Tell me you didn't steal that.”

“Na. Old Walla gave it to us. Says its worthless, not worth fix'in.”

“But if anyone can fix it, you can,” Hopper added.

“I don't know,” Nik frowned. “I've never worked on something this complex.”

“You gotta try. With the money we get selling it, we can go anywhere we want to go,” Lucky pleaded.

Nik tilted her head to the side, thinking, “True. Fine, I'll give it a try. Does that old handheld have any juice left?”

“I'll go git it,” Hopper ran off.

Nik looked at his brother. He was already as tall as she was and growing rapidly. “I'm not promising, kay. It may be broke good. That’s why Old Walla gave it to you.”

He shrugged, “worth trying, ya?”

“Ya. Worth trying.”

“Mi ge im!” Hopper yelled as he ran back. “It still works.”

“Good.” Nik took the handheld from him and started searching for what she would need. “Can you too handle dinner while I do this?”

Lucky snorted, “Soya. We're not little kids like Mouse anymore.”

Nik smiled, “na, you're not. Go. Leave me be to figure this out.”

Both boys stood up taller at her comment, then left to scavenge for food. Nik sat down in front of the broken machine and started reading.

Over the years, Nik had found she had a knack for fixing things. She started off with simple projects around the spaces they had called home. Fixing leaks in piping, damaged ducts, broken tools. Then she had found an old handheld and was able to find instructions for anything she wanted. She had rerouted cables and wires to provide light and power where previously they had gone without. She engineered their meager shower at the scrubber; not only diverting the water, but filtering what they used and routing it back to the system to prevent the loss from being detected. She fixed broken odds and ends the children found so they could sell it and buy food: rebreathers, monitors, coffee makers. She had even fixed a small-scale 3-D printer once.

This large 3-D printer, though, was something altogether different. It was an older model, but still capable of printing complex items, even weapons, with the right material and programming. She had never tackled something this difficult before, but the challenge was what she needed to take her mind off the problem of relocating the children.

As she worked on it the next few days, her mind kept drifting back to the problem and a plan began to take shape.

****

“Will this work?” Hopper held out a circuit board. It had been three weeks since the boys brought her the printer.

Taking it, Nik held it up to the light, “na, this is a mem-card, not a comm-card.” Seeing his crestfallen expression, she pursed her lips in thought. “But I might be able to salvage some of the components for use.”

An idea came to her and she smile a wide toothy grin at the boy, “you know, if we could find an integration card from a class three scrubber, I might be able to cobble something together that would work. Go check with Roggi in the maintenance shop tonight. Offer him this in exchange.” She held up a slim circuit card that had nothing on it she could use for the project but was perfectly good and the chips on it were compatible with the station's scrubbers.

Hopper took it from her and tucked it into one of his pockets. It was only mid-day, so it would be hours before Roggi came on shift. The boy plopped down on the floor beside her. This close, she could see the beginnings of reddish stubble growing on his chin. If she had to guess, he and his twin were around thirteen. They were starting to show an interest in the scantily clad women working at the brothels.

“What are we going to do, Nik?” he asked in a low voice.

She put down the part she was cleaning. “I have a plan, but it all hinges on getting this thing working.”

He nodded, satisfied, “it's close, ya?”

“Ya.”

“Wanna come out with us? There's something we want to show you.”

It had been a while since she had been out. She had been using the printer as an excuse, but the encounter that had left the still-healing scar on her face had unnerved her. She knew, though, if she continued to stay behind, hiding, that reluctance would eventually grow into fear.

“Later. I got something I need to do first.”

“Kay.” Hopper stood up. “See ya later.”

After he left, Nik carefully put her handful of old, only slightly damaged, tools away and covered the printer with a ragged tarp and piled some broken cables and angle-iron on it for camouflage. It wouldn't do for someone to stumble into their place and find it. All her hard work over the last weeks would be for nothing.

Slipping out of an opening in the wall behind a hydroponics rack, she made her way to Maggie's. She hoped the older woman had what she needed.

An hour later, she met up with the boys on the main concourse.

“Oye, what you want to show me?”

“Come on,” Lucky led the way.

She quickly discerned their destination: the number two construction arm. What they wanted to show her was a mystery. With the twins it could be anything from a fancy new ship under construction, or a beat-up war ship being overhauled.

Reaching the airlock leading out of the station, into the open space beyond where docking arms usually held the latest project. Peering through the thick window on the heavy door, her breath caught in her throat.

Outside the airlock, there was nothing. Not just no ship being built or worked on. The arms that held the docking clamps were bare. The pilot drones were gone. All the heavy equipment that used to fill the area was gone. Nothing but empty space and the bare docking arms stretched out beyond the window.

Her heart hammering in her chest, Nik turned to the twins, “are the other ones like this?”

“They're working on number three now, but they haven't started on number one, the one they built that big-ass Mormon ship at,” Lucky told her.

Nik leaned her head back against the cold metal of the door and closed her eyes. Things were happening faster than she thought they would. She had to finish that printer soon. And hopefully, Maggie would come through for her.

****

Roggi came through with the card she needed and within a week, she had the printer back up and working. All it needed was programs downloaded and raw material. She was proud of what she accomplished. Maybe she could get a maintenance job wherever they ended up. Then she could provide for her and the others instead of them having to scavenge all the time just to survive.

But where? Where would they go? She had considered staying in the belt, perhaps Vesta, but Ganymede was also enticing. The efforts to rebuild and restore Ganymede Station was in full swing and would need all the able bodies it could get.

That night, she decided to get the twins and Mouse in on the decision. After a meager dinner, she waved the boys over to where she and the girl sat.

“Hey, I need to talk to all you.”

The boys looked at her expectantly.

“The printer is ready to sell. Tomorrow, I’ll go talk to Roggi about finding a buyer.”

Hopper grinned and held his hand out to his brother, “I won. Give it over.”

Lucky frowned and dug around in his pockets before producing something shiny and silver. With a sigh and one last longing look at the object, he dropped in into the Hopper’s outstretched palm. It was a harmonica. Hopper put it to his lips blowing into it, producing a tuneless note. Happy, he put it into one of his pockets to examine closer later.

Nik frowned at Lucky, “you bet that I couldn’t fix it?”

The boy ducked his head, “you said you might not could do it.”

“Keyá,” she agreed. “But look what it got you.” She chuckled at his disgusted look.

“Anyway,” she continued, “now we got to decide where to go.”

All three of them looked at her expectantly.

“I narrowed it down to two possibilities: Vesta or Ganymede Station,” she paused to wait for their reaction.

“Ganymede Station? The moon?” Lucky asked eyes wide.

“Really?” Hopper asked her hopefully.

Nik nodded, “ya, there’s a lot of work to be had there with the rebuilding efforts and I’m pretty good at fixing things.”

“Ya, that’s true,” Lucky frowned.

“You mean like a real job? With real wages?” Hopper asked.

“Ya.”

The two boys exchanged looks. “What about us?” Hopper asked.

“Ya, if you want to work. But there are schools there too.”

Both looked laughed. “We don’t need school. We know all we need now,” Lucky sneered.

She stifled a laugh of her own, “we’ll see. We’ll see. So, Ganymede?”

Vigorous nods.

She looked down at Mouse whose lip was quivering, “what about you?”

The little girl held out her arms prompting Nik to pick her up and hug her.

“You won’t leave me?”

“Never,” she hugged her harder. “You’re my girl, how could I even think about leaving you?”

“So,” Hopper asked, “what’s the plan?”

She hesitated for a moment, then decided to just tell them. “You know I’m older than you, right?”

“Ya. So?”

She untwined Mouse’s arms from around her neck and sat the girl in her lap. “So, I’m a lot older than you.”

“How much?” Hopper asked suspiciously.

“Don’t freak out, but I’m twenty-four.”

Silence. Then, Lucky whistled. “Damn, you’re old, Nik.”

“Can we call you Gamma?” Hopper asked with a snicker.

“Gamma Nik,” his brother chimed in.

“How bout I punch both you in the face?” she threatened.

Both boys started laughing, even Mouse giggled.

“Don’t you start,” she said with mock anger at the child, who covered her mouth to hide her smile.

“What’s you being old gotta do with anything?” Hopper asked.

Nik grinned, “kids, meet your new amma.”


	6. Chapter 6

It took nearly a month for Roggi to find them a buyer for the printer. In the meantime, the dismantling of the station continued. Passenger ships and cargo ships left daily, taking residents of the station to their new homes. Soon, the main concourse was a virtual ghost town. Only the food vendors, bars, and brothels remained, catering to the decommissioning crews that were replacing the residents.

There was a considerable amount of grumbling among the station’s inhabitants that remained on board. Word was that the machinery and parts being removed from the station were being shipped to destinations down the well and that all the profits were going to Inners.

It was a rough month for the group. Though there were lots of junk for them to scavenge, the decommissioning crews weren’t interested in buying. The pickings for food was just as dismal with the men from the crews being a lot less charitable and harder to steal from, they often went without. Nik gave most of her food to Mouse, and more weight fell off her frame, erasing what curves she did have. 

On one of her trips to see Maggie, the older woman was shocked by her appearance.

“Oh, child,” she tutted, “look at you. Not enough meat on you to even make a good broth. Come,” she grabbed Niks arm and pulled her towards the desk, “sit, I’ll get you something to eat.”

As she wandered away, she muttered, “that child is going to drop dead before she gets off this station if we don’t do something. What are we supposed to do? There’s got to be something.” Her voice faded into the background.

“Here, eat this,” she said, startling Nik out of a daze. She set the bowl of kibble down in front of her and sat down to watch her eat.

Nik’s hand shook slightly as she lifted the spoon to her mouth, the gray marble dangling from her wrist swaying with the motion, but after the first bite, she wolfed down the entire bowl. Afterwards, she felt guilty because she didn’t save any for the others. Maggie recognized the look.

“I got more for you to take back to the others,” she patted Nik’s hand.

Nik gave her a weak smile, “taki, Maggie.”

“You need to take care of yourself. Who’s going to take care of those kids if you don’t?”

“I know,” she sighed. “But with everyone gone, there’s just nothing left here.”

“I know.” Maggie stood up and went over to a box with a stack of film on it. Grabbing the top two pieces, she brought them back to the desk and held them up to the light. “I found these for the boys,” she held them out to Nik.

The films were the birth records for Hopper and Lucky, who’s real names turned out to be Josh and Sean Byrne.

Tears filled Nik’s eyes, “Taki, taki, Maggie. This will help a lot. What about Mouse?”

Maggie shook her head, “she musta been born off station. I can’t find a record for her at all. Sorry, mali mi, there’s nothing.”

“These will have to do, then. What about me?”

“I’m still looking. That box is buried deep, but I’ll find it, don’t you worry,” she patted Nik’s hand again.

“Mi sasa,” Nik smiled. “I need to get back. Roggi found a buyer for the printer and I have to meet them soon.”

“You be careful, Bébé.”

“Roggi is gut Belta beratna,” she assured Maggie. “He’ll look after me.” At least Nik hoped he would.

Before she left, Maggie gave her three packs of kibble and a hug.

“Come back tomorrow, Niki. Maggie will have something for you, kay?”

“Kay. Oyedeng, Maggie.”

“Oyedeng, Niki girl.”

****

“Kewe kowlting ando go, sésata?”

“Oye, Roggi. Mi gut. Kewe to?”

“Mi gut,” Roggi beckoned Nik to come in, throwing the door of the maintenance shop open for her and the twins to push their makeshift cart in.

“Oh my God, they’re just kids,” the woman waiting in the room exclaimed as they entered. “Half-starved kids.”

Nik looked up and met the woman’s dark eyes. She was regal with serious dark eyes and warm brown skin. Her tattoo around her neck stood out against it like a badge of honor. She was a true Belter.

“That’s Naomi Nagata,” Hopper whispered in awe behind her.

Nik took a step back towards the door, ready to make a run for it if she made the wrong move. Yes, she was famous and a champion for the people of the belt by all the stories about her, but Nik had found that stories never matched reality.

Naomi held up her hands, palms down and made a patting motion, “it’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you. Keting nem to?”

When Nik didn’t immediately answer, Hopper spoke up, “I’m Hopper and this is Nik.”

“I’m Naomi.”

“We know who you are,” Nik found her voice.

“Roggi, what’s going on here?” Naomi asked the mechanic.

“She may not look like much, but Nik here is one of the best repair techs on this station,” Roggi walked up to Nik and put his hand on her shoulder and smiled, before turning back to Naomi, “If she can’t fix it, not nobody can.”

Nik blushed at the exaggeration, but stood up straighter and nodded, “it works. I can show you if you have the raw materials.”

Naomi walked around the printer, bending down to pull the side panel off and look at the wiring.

“When was the last time you ate?” she asked in a soft voice.

“This morning,” Nik answered truthfully.

Naomi looked up at her doubtfully then nodded slightly and turned back to the printer’s interior.

“What’s this?”

Nik squatted down beside her. Naomi pointed out the jury-rigged comm-card.

“I was able to repair everything else, but the comm-card was fried, and I couldn’t find a replacement. So, I took an integration card from a Class three atmo scrubber and repurposed it with some to the good components from the comm-card. It was a little big for the space, so I had to rig a new clip for it off to the side,” she explained.

“That’s brilliant,” the tall woman looked at Nik with new respect. “Let’s see what it can do.”

“It only has the basic programming that comes standard with these models,” Nik told her as Roggi loaded a portion of dry, gray polymer to one of the bins. “But it should be enough for you to tell if it works or not.”

She stood back while Naomi selected a program. A few moments later, the printer dispensed a spanner wrench. Roggi picked it up and handed it to Naomi who examined it before handing it back.

She turned to Nik, “how much?”

Nik had researched how much one of these printers went for used and she knew exactly how many credits they needed for transport off the station for her, the kids, and Maggie, but haggling was part of the game. She named a price close to what a new printer would cost, almost twice what this one was worth.

Naomi laughed and named a price that was only slightly less that the number Nik was aiming for.

They went back and forth a few times before Naomi waved her hands in defeat and agreed to a price that was twenty percent higher than what Nik needed.

“Okay, but you come back to my ship and take a look at our broken printer. It’s a different class and can make items this one can’t. It would be nice to have both of them working.”

Nik hesitated for just a beat before agreeing, “ya, I’ll do it.”

Hopper bounced up and down on his toes, “can I go too?”

At Nik’s look, he quit bouncing, “you need someone to watch your back, Nik.”

She hid her smile. She knew he was dying to see the inside of the famous Roci and maybe meet James Holden. She looked back at the woman, “is that okay?”

Naomi smiled a warm smile, “soyá.”

****

The inside of the Roci was just as impressive as she imagined. Hoppers eyes where as wide as escape hatches and Nik was sure he was about to give himself whiplash trying to see everything as they followed Naomi to the maintenance bay of the ship.

She patted the printer pushed against a bulkhead out of the way, “here it is.”

Nik walked over to it with as much bravado as she could muster. Someone had been using its flat top as a table to hold tools. She pushed a couple of the well-used, but high-quality wrenches aside, wishing she could take them, and popped open the top panel.  
“What's it doing?”

Naomi came to stand beside her, “I can load the program I want, and it will start printing, but about half-way through it just stops. It's not the program, I checked that. I rebooted the system and reloaded its base program with the last update. I checked all the wiring and components. Nothing is out of place. Amos took a look at it, he's our mechanic, but he doesn't work on equipment like this much. We were going to just replace it with yours, but if you can fix it, I would be grateful. And I would pay you for your work.”

Nik studied it for a moment then stood back, considering. The more credits they had when they reached Ganymede, the better a start they could get on the moon.

“I can't promise I can fix it, but I'll give it a try,” she told the woman.

“Gut,” Naomi nodded with satisfaction.

“Hey, what do we have here?” a dark-haired man with a Martian drawl entered the bay.

“Alex,” Naomi greeted him, “this is Hopper and Nik. She sold me the new printer and has agreed to try to fix this one, too.”

He looked dubious, “is that so?”

“I've been told she's the best on this station, so I figured we had nothing to lose since we're going to be here while Amos and the repair crews work on the damage to our comm array.”

The man nodded his head like a typical inner, “no, I can't see the harm in letting her have a go at it.”

Both Nik and Hopper had been quiet and still since the Martian entered the bay, waiting for any indication that they needed to run. When he turned to leave, they both let out visible breaths.

“Hey, Alex?” Naomi asked before he could leave. “Why don't you take Hopper here and show him around? He's excited about being on the ship.”

Alex looked over at Hopper, who was bouncing on his toes again, “how bout it? Wanna come take a look?”

Hopper almost jumped to join him, but then stilled and looked at Nik pleadingly. She smiled slightly at the boy's excitement and gave him a nod, “stay outa trouble, kay?”

“Kay,” the boy grinned at her and followed Alex out.

Before he left, Naomi grabbed the man by the arm and told him, “get that child some food.”

Alex nodded and left, leaving Nik alone with Naomi.

“What do you need to get started?” the woman asked Nik, walking back over to her side.

Nik looked around the bay, it seemed to have a wide array of tools, “may I use the tools in here? If not, I have to go get mine.”

Naomi nodded, “ya, use what you need. Anything else?”

“A handheld? I'm going to need the schematics and parts breakdown.”

Naomi walked over to a cabinet and searched around in it for a moment before handing Nik a handheld.

“It's old, but it should work. When you're done, you can keep it.”

Old? This handheld was so much better that the discarded one she typically used that she was stunned. “You're giving this to me?” she asked warily. Nobody on the station ever just gave away something, especially not something in this condition.

“Yeah,” Naomi smiled sadly, sensing what she was thinking.

Nik was tempted to reject the offer to wipe that look of pity off her face, but there was a saying among the children: never step over something useful; pick it up, koyo. One child usually said the first part and any others around chimed in for the second.

“She she taki taki,” Nik said deferentially to the woman that was a hero to many in the belt.

“Im to nating, little sésata.”

Nik cleared off the printer, returning the tools that were piled on it in their proper locations around the bay. When she had a question about where one belonged, Naomi pointed it out for her. Then she brought up the drawings she needed on the handheld and studied them for a bit.

“Where'd you get that scar?” Naomi asked suddenly.

The scar on Niks face was healing, but still pink and fresh. “I caught a broke pipe with my face,” she said with a slight smile. It was only a partial lie.

“Uh huh,” the woman hummed.

After that, she was busy tearing apart the printer and ignored Naomi. The woman stood up and stretched after a while.

“It looks like you're going to be here a while and I have things to take care of myself,” she announced. She pointed at a panel on the wall, “if you need anything, you can get me or Alex on that comm panel, kay?”

Nik absently nodded with her free hand, “kay.”

“Just don't wander around. Stay in here so I know where you are, kay?”

“Kay.”

The door slid shut behind Naomi leaving Nik alone in the bay. She sat back, pretending to consider the printer, while she took stock of the situation. The crew of the Roci had a good reputation and there was plenty of room on their ship. Maybe, if they were going down the well, she could buy passage with them. If she could fix this printer, then they might put in a good word for her on Ganymede that would help her find a job. It was worth a shot.

Smiling, she went back to work tearing apart the troublesome machine. She had an inkling of the problem, she just had to get to the component. Carefully, she removed components to reach the offending part.

She had the part in her hands less than an hour later. Two of the tumblers had snapped off. She grinned; it would be simple to print a new part on the other printer.

“What the hell?”

She dropped the part she had and spun around in a crouch. Standing at the entrance of the bay was the Inner whose lunch she had stolen. He was wearing gray coveralls with a patch on the chest that said “Rocinante.” Of course, how stupid could she be? Alex had been the other man eating with him that day.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked, taking a step into the bay.

Nik's eyes darted around looking for another exit, but there was only the one.

“Fixing this printer,” she answered slowly.

He took another step, “try again.”

She moved quickly and put the printer between them. “Naomi brought me.” She waved at the comm panel. “Call her and ask.” She crossed her thin arms over her chest and looked at him defiantly.

Remembering the complete lack of emotion on his face when he was beating Fatty in the corridor, she tried not to shudder. She had encountered others like him over the years. Children and adults that were fundamentally broken. If they had friends, they manipulated them and sacrificed them when it suited them. They cared about nobody but themselves. They were unpredictable and dangerous and best kept at a distance. If he was a member of this crew then there was no way in hell she was staying on the ship.

He stepped all the way into the bay and angled towards the panel, keeping her in his sight as he went. At the panel, he pointed at her, “stay there.”

Yeah, she thought, that didn't work for you last time, did it? She sidled sideways, keeping the printer between them. In the process, she had almost a straight shot at the door.

He keyed the panel, “hey, Naomi?”

“Amos,” came the reply, “where are you?”

“In the maintenance bay. There something you need to tell me?” he asked.

“Yeah, Amos, just leave her be, I'll be right there.”

The comm went silent. Amos stood there considering her. After a moment he asked, “how's your face?”

“Why do you care, welwala?” she asked flippantly.

He gave a shrug with his shoulders instead of his hands, typical inner ignorance, “just making conversation.”

“I like the quiet.”

“Suit yourself.”

They only stood facing off for a moment longer before the door slid open again and Naomi strode into the bay. She paused and took in the scene, then looked at Nik.

“Nik, you okay?”

“Mi gut,” Nik replied, not relaxing her stance.

“Amos is mi beratna, my family. He won't hurt you.” Naomi moved into the bay, putting her body between the two and breaking their line of sight to each other. “He told me how you got that scar. He tried to help you.”

“I didn't need his help.” She looked at the dismantled printer, “I can't fix it. Sorry I wasted your time. I'll just leave.” She stepped towards the door.

“She's lying,” Amos told Naomi.

“Nik, stop,” the woman said. “We had a deal.”

“I told you I would try. I tried. It's broke bad. I can't fix it.”

“Nik, you're not going to believe...” Hopper announced as he stepped through the door beside Alex. The boy's eyes went wide with panic when he saw Amos.

“Oh, sabaka!” Hopper swore and immediately stomped Alex's foot, making him jump to the side, clearing the way for Nik. “Run, Nik!” He darted out of the doorway and disappeared.

Nik was right behind him, but her hesitation cost her. She only made it halfway to the ramp before a pair of strong arms wrapped around her, lifting her off the floor.

“Got you,” Amos breathed in her ear.

Nik did panic then. She kicked, scratched, and even bit. She still held a small driver in her hand, and she used it with fury on her captor.

Amos, grunted at a kick that got precariously close to his privates, “guys, a little help here? I don't want to hurt her.”

“Ah, no, pardner,” Alex drawled. “I'm enjoying watching you get your ass whooped by that little wildcat.”

Nik felt his grip on her slipping and her feet almost touch the floor when there was a pinch on her shoulder. A numbness started in the shoulder and spread rapidly. Her struggles became weaker as the room begin to grow fuzzy. Then everything went black.


	7. Chapter 7

Soft beeping and a restraining weight on her arm roused her. She woke slowly from her drug-induced slumber, panic dampened by what remnants were still in her bloodstream. Peeking carefully through her eyelashes, she saw Naomi sitting on a reclined chair nearby, reading something on her handheld, a frown marring her features.

The door opened and yet another member of the Roci entered with Amos on his heals. Nik shut her eyes and feigned sleep.

“What the hell, Naomi?” James Holden demanded. “I'm off the ship for just a few hours and you and Amos drug and kidnap a kid?”

“You know me better than that, Jim,” she replied calmly moving to his side. “Look at her. She's half-starved and needs medical attention.”

“Where are her parents?”

“I don't know. Amos thinks she and the others she runs with are orphans.”

“And you agree with him?”

“For God's sake, Jim!” exasperation filled her voice. “Just look at her. Who would let their kid get in this condition?”

She heard Holden sigh, “What happened?”

Naomi told him what had transpired in the maintenance bay.

When she finished, Holden laughed, “Well, Amos, you certainly have a way with kids.”

“Hoss, you better come take a look at this,” Alex's voice said over the comm.

“Not now, Alex.”

“Um, I don't think this can wait.”

“What is it?”

“There's a group of people outside that don't look so happy and the woman leading them is demanding entry.”

Maggie was coming for her.

Holden sighed heavily, “anyone care to guess what they want? Naomi, come with me to talk to them. Amos, stay here and make sure she doesn't go anywhere when she wakes up.”

“Jim, I don't think that's a good idea,” Naomi said quietly. “She's scared of him.”

“Well, she's out right now and those people out there are more likely to listen to one of their own than me, so I need you with me.”

“I just don't think this is a good idea.”

“You got a better one?”

Before she could answer, everything in the room when quiet and, even with her eyes closed, Nik could tell the lights went off. Everything came back on within a couple heartbeats.

“What the hell was that, Alex?” Holden asked, his voice exasperated.

“That, my friends, was us losing our connection to the station's power. We're back on our own power now, so no harm.”

Nik struggled not to smile, she had friends out there.

“Ah, shit,” Alex said.

“Do I want to know?” Holden asked.

“We just lost one of the cameras. The one with the view of the docking bay.”

“This keeps getting better and better. Come on, let's go talk to these people and tell them they can have their kid back.”

They left the room, leaving her alone with Amos. She told herself to stay calm, Maggie was on her way.

“You can open your eyes now, they're gone,” his tone was dry.

Opening her eyes, she looked around. They were in medical bay. Amos was leaning against the wall where he could keep an eye on her and the door at the same time.

She looked up and met his stare, “if you hurt me, my friends will do some permanent damage to this ship and good luck getting it repaired here.”

“I'm not going to hurt you.”

“I've met people like you before,” she told him in a rush, “and your word don't mean anything.”

That didn't even get a reaction from him. If anything, his expression closed up even more.

“You don't know me.”

Nik started to retort but thought better of it. It wasn't a good idea to bait him when she was locked in a room with him. Best just to stay quiet and wait for Maggie. The silence between them stretched out uncomfortably.

She was beginning to worry that something had gone wrong when she heard Maggie's voice outside. The door opened and Naomi entered followed by the older woman. They were both smiling like nothing out of the ordinary was going on and they were just old friends catching up.

When Maggie saw her, she hurried across the room to her side.

“Niki girl, what happened?”

“I'll tell you later, Maggie, just get me off this ship. Please,” she pleaded.

“Did they hurt you, Mali mi?”

Naomi tensed and looked at Nik, but she just shook her head.

“No, this was all just a misunderstanding. Can we go now?”

She could see Naomi visibly relax.

Maggie patted her on the arm and smiled. “Good news, child. Naomi and the captain have agreed to take us all to Ganymede.”

“What?”

“They're going to take us to Ganymede,” the woman repeated, confused at her alarmed expression.

“Now?”

“No,” Naomi stepped up. “We have business in the slow zone we have to attend to first. But then we're heading back down the well and we can stop on our way and pick you and the others up.”

Nik's panic subsided. Good they had time to figure out another plan. She looked up at Maggie with a smile pasted on her face, “that's great.”

Maggie beamed down at her, “good. Let's get you up and out of here before those little terrors break something that can't be fixed.”

As she left the med behind Maggie and Naomi a few minutes later, Amos nodded at her.

“See you later, Kitten.”

Nik made a crude jester that earned her a chuckle and then the door slid shut behind her.

*****

“You going to tell me what happened?” Maggie asked her as the five of them scarfed down a meal from a vendor.

They were sitting around a table with more food spread out before them that the children and Nik had ever seen at one sitting. Maggie had convinced her that she could spare some of her credits from the sale of the printer for the meal and seeing the hopeful look on the kids' faces, she had given in. They were going to eat themselves in a food comma at the rate they were going.

Between bites Nik explained. When she got to the part about Amos, Maggie frowned.

“I don’t understand. What’s wrong with him?”

“You didn’t see him, Maggie,” Nik struggled to make her understand. “Do you remember that kid a few years ago that was spaced by accident?”

“Ya?”

“It wasn’t an accident,” she told her flatly.

“What are you talking about, child?”

“He was broke, Maggie,” she touched her head with three of her fingers, “up here. He would torment the younger kids just for fun. He stole food from others. He lied. He couldn’t be trusted.”

“Child, all of us are broke in some way. Me, I talk to myself and fill my rooms with worthless junk. I know what the kids call me,” she looked at the twins pointedly. They both blushed and looked down at their food. “You, Niki, are a grown woman and the best tech on this station, yet you pretend you’re a kid and run with packs of them. Out here, there are a lot of broken people. It don’t mean they’re dangerous, child.”

“No, Maggie, listen to me,” she argued. “That’s exactly what we thought at first and we just avoided him. But then one of the little ones went missing. We hunted for him for days. When we finally found his body,” she stopped and looked down at Mouse who was happily stuffing another spoon of algae noodles into her mouth. The child had been about her age. Swallowing, she continued her story.

“His body was all cut up. Not from an accident neither. There were bites taken out of him too.”

“Sweet Lord,” Maggie went pale.

“We didn’t suspect Dav. We thought it was some crazy adult. So, we were hyper alert for the next few weeks. We weren’t watching out for the right person, though. Another kid disappeared. The last person he had been seen with was Dav. When we caught up with him, he was standing over the body with a bloody knife in his hand. The kid was already dead.”

Everyone at the table was silent.

“And he had that same dead look in his eyes that Amos has. When asked why he did it, he said he just wanted to see if he could get away with it again. Maggie, he didn’t do it because the kid pissed him off, or because he wanted something from him. He did it just because he could. He was a monster.”

“So, the rest of you kids put him out an airlock?”

Nik hugged Mouse to her and breathed in her dirty, little kid smell to drive away the horror of that day. She had only been fifteen at the time.

“We had to. Nobody was safe with him walking around the station.”

“And you think this Amos is the same way?”

“I’ve looked right into his eyes twice, Maggie. There’s nothing there. Even when he was beating the crap out of Fatty, there wasn’t any anger. Nothing. He’s broke. The last thing I want is to be locked in a ship on the float with him. And I sure won’t put any of these three in that kind of danger.”

“But the crew of the Rocinante are good people. They are heroes. They would never tolerate a killer in their midst.” Maggie wasn’t ready to let it go

“What do we know about them? Really know about them. That was the first time you ever met them, ya?”

The other woman looked dubious, but Nik could see that she was getting through to her, but slowly.

Sighing she reached out and took Maggie’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “I’ll make you a deal. We have some time before the Roci will be back here, ya? If I cannot find us another ship. A safe ship,” she added when Maggie opened her mouth to argue. “If I can’t find us safe passage before then, we will consider going with the Roci. But,” she held up her hand, “you and I will talk to Naomi about him and get her promise that we will be safe. Deal?”

Maggie thought about it briefly before agreeing, “Deal.”

Good, now all she had to do was find another ship going down the well. One with a reliable crew. And berthing for the five of them.

Right.


	8. Chapter 8

With Maggie’s help, Nik had bought more appropriate clothes and had abandoned the pretense of being a kid. It was easier to approach ship crews and have them take her seriously as an adult. Over the next weeks, though, she had failed to secure a flight off the station for them. One captain had offered to take the boys to one of the new systems through the ring. They needed capable hands for farming there. Another had offered her passage in exchange for sharing his cabin on the trip. She had punched him in the face and gotten herself escorted from the docking bay for that.

The grumbling of the residents was beginning to escalate into petty acts of sabotage. Tools and equipment disappearing when not monitored, power being shut off the areas, ventilation cut off, docking clamps failing on freighters. Fights were also breaking out between them and the crews, adding to the tension. The security force on the station was spread too thin to be effective and, since most were belters, did little to discourage the residents.

There were rumors of more security forces on their way to the station to maintain order. There were rumors about all the residents being evicted earlier that anticipated.

For Nik feeding the four of them continued to be a problem and she found herself dipping into her credits more and more. It was hard to say no to the children when they were hungry, and she had the credits available to feed them. As all of them ate and filled back out, the credits in her account dipped dangerously close to what she calculated was needed for the trip to Ganymede.

The twins managed to earn a bit here and there running errands and delivering food, parts, tools, and other small items to the crews doing the decommissioning. Maggie watched Mouse when Nik had errands of her own and the child grew fond of the older woman. When she wasn’t looking for passage or running errands, Nik was in Maggie’s rooms helping her go through the boxes looking for her records.

She was sitting in a small clear area on the floor reading through a file when Lucky banged on the door.

“Nik!” he panted, flushed with exertion and excitement, “Kom, you gotta see what Hopper found!”

Her back was aching from being hunched over for so long, so she climbed to her feet, “Maggie,” she called, “watch Mouse for a bit, kay?”

She dropped a kiss on the end of the girl’s nose, “be right back, Mali mi.”

Following Lucky as he led the way to his brother, she found herself grinning from the sheer joy of the run. Unlike the normal residents of the station, Lucky took twisty shortcuts, crawled up shafts, leaped over rails, and wove through workspaces with no regard for conventions. Nik stayed right with him, thinking this might be her last chance to run with this kind of abandon. Already, the twins were treating her differently; less like one of them, more like an adult. They spent more time apart from her and Mouse than they used to, but that may have been because she spent most of her free time in Maggie’s room searching through the files.

By the time they reached their destination, she was just as winded and flushed as the boy. Looking around, she couldn’t place where they were. She knew they were high up on the station and close to the outer hull, and roughly what quadrant, but she had never seen this area before.

“Képelish milowada?” she asked Lucky.

“The VIP ring, where they put all the welwalla’s when they here.”

“Why are we here?”

“Kom,” he waved her forward, “I’ll show you.”

As he led her away from the hull, he kept of a stream of chatter. “Hopper was running lunch to a crew working two decks up and took a shortcut through here.” They entered a wide corridor, stripped of its carpet and fancy paneling and approached a metal grate that was sitting askew. “He saw this and came back after he was done to check it out.”

Pulling up the grate, he slipped through and disappeared into the void below the floor. Nik followed him and found herself in a duct that ran parallel to the corridor. She crawled on her hands and knees until she reached a intersection. The boy ahead of her had disappeared.

“Lucky?” she called out softly. “Lucky!”

“Psst, down here,” his voice came from her left.

Taking the left branch, she crawled forward four or five meters and came to a stop. There was a hole in the duct where it had rusted through and gave way under someone’s (probably Hopper) weight.

“Down here, Nik,” Lucky hissed from below.

“I can’t see anything,” she answered.

A faint light flared to life, held in Hopper’s hand. “Never thought you be a scaredy, Nik.”

She huffed at the insult. “Pashang fong! I don’t want to land on you.”

She swung her legs through the hole, careful to avoid the jagged edges duct, and dropped down lightly into the space below. Hopper’s light didn’t do much to illuminate the area, but she could tell it wasn’t too large, probably smaller than Maggie’s main room. Like Maggie’s room, it was also cluttered with stacked boxes.

“What is this?”

In response, Lucky tossed something at her that she deftly caught. It was a package made from a tough but flexible polymer. She held it up to Hopper’s light to read the label: UNN Combat Ration, Texturized Protein Stroganoff, 1 Unit = 4,000Cal.

She looked around the space, “all these boxes?”

“Full of them.”

There were dozens of boxes piled up around them. The amount of food in the room was staggering. “This has to belong to someone,” she looked around warily.

“Na,” Hopper told her. Everything in here was sealed. “Look,” he shown the light against one of the walls, “that’s the door. Go check it out,” he urged.

Squeezing between stacks of boxes, Nik went over to the door. Looking at it dubiously, she could see that someone had pried it open slightly.

“There’s no power to it,” Lucky informed her.

She peeked through the opening but couldn’t see anything. “Point that light over here again.”

When the light shown on the opening, she could see it wasn’t really one. Immediately against the outside of the door was a sheet of metal. The door opened to, what? A wall?

“What’s on the other side?” she asked.

“Some kind of office. There's cabinets against the wall.”

The light flickered over a box near her and she made out a date on the side. “These are older than me.”

“We think someone stashed them in a storeroom here and then built a false wall to hide them, planning to come back later for them.”

“Something must have happened to them, cause they never came back for it,” Lucky finished for his brother.

“How close are the decommissioning crews?” she asked the brothers.

“Two decks up and closer to the hull,” Hopper supplied.

Nik chewed on her lip, thinking. There was enough food in the room to feed them for months. Hell, enough to feed all the residents of the station for several weeks. “We gotta move as much of this out of here as we can before they find it.”

Lucky grinned, “we got a plan.”

****

Nik had to admit, the twin’s plan was solid. She made one suggestion to recruit Roggi and Maggie for additional help, which they eagerly adopted, now they just had to wait for the right time to move. The optimum time was after the mid-shift meal break for the second shift. The crews would be working two decks up and it would be hours before the first shift personnel were awake.

To convince Roggi and Maggi, they brought several packets and shared them together in Maggie’s rooms. The meals were unfamiliar to everyone except Maggie, who grew up on Earth, but they were filling. Nik shared her stroganoff with Mouse, the twins shared something called spaghetti, Maggie grabbed one labeled “red beans and rice” with a delighted squeal, and Roggi tried southwest chili.

Fighting off a food comma afterwards, they discussed the plan and decided the sooner they moved the food, the better. The decommissioning crews were moving fast and could discover the stash at any time. Roggi said he could get a small cargo loader the following day for moving the boxes. Maggie volunteered her rooms for storage.

Hopper looked around them, “you don’t have enough room.”

Maggie chuckled and ruffled his hair, “I will by tomorrow. Especially with you guys helping.”

The boys groaned and everyone laughed. The remainder of the day was spent moving boxes from Maggie’s room to empty rooms nearby. With many of the residents departed, there was no shortage of open rooms.

“Why can’t we just put the food in here instead of your boxes?” Lucky complained.

“Because, we don’t know who has access to this place,” Nik told him. “We only have complete control over Maggie’s rooms, so that’s the safest place for the food. No body is going to steal a bunch of old medical records, right?”

“I suppose,” he agreed, but still didn’t look happy about it.

“Cheer up. Think of all the food we’re about to have,” she smiled widely. “We’ll never go hungry again while we’re here.”

Despite the boys complaining, they worked quickly and in short order Maggie’s main room was empty and ready for the boxes of food. For safety, Nik and the children agreed to stay with the older woman until they left the station. They just had to go gather their few belongings and move their sleeping pads to the rooms.

****

“Niki, child,” Maggie beckoned her to the desk.

Nik waved the children on, “I’ll catch up with you.”

When the door shut behind them, she went over to the desk and sat in the chair beside Maggie. “What’s up?”

“I finally found these,” Maggie held up several folders.

She took them and opened the top one to read the film on top. This file was hers and detailed all her illness from the time she arrived at the station to her treatment after her parents disappeared.

“Maggie?”

“You said that you weren’t here when I was brought in by the men that found me?”

“That’s right.”

“And that I was gone by the time you got back?”

“Spit it out, Niki. Quit dancing around your question.”

“Where did I go?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where did I go when I left medical? Who took me? I was only,” she paused and flipped through the file, “six at the time. There was no way I just walked out of the med bay alone. Someone must have taken me. Right?”

Maggie frowned in thought, “Yeah, I suppose. Your discharge papers should say who you left with.”

Nik flipped through the file, “there’s no discharge papers here.”

Maggie took the file from her, “there has to be.” She looked through the file twice before closing it and handing it back. “You’re right. Maybe its in another file that I missed. That happens sometimes. Even your parents have two files each.” She nodded at the remaining files in front of Nik on the desk.

Putting her file down, Nik picked up the one on top. Her breath caught in her throat: it was the death certificate for her mother. Flipping through the file, reading every sheet, she frowned as she went back to the first page and read it again.

“This says she died from exsanguination?” she stumbled over the unfamiliar word.

Maggie nodded, “yes, exsanguination. Her throat was cut, and she bled to death.”

She read more of the report. “She was badly beaten.” She picked up the next folder and opened it. After a moment, she said, “so was my father. His cause of death was the same as hers.” She flipped to the last page. “This report says their injuries were consistent with torture.” 

Her eyes filled with tears. All these years she had thought the worst of her parents. That they had abandoned her because she was sick and couldn’t handle zero gravity. According to these reports, they were taken from her. And suffered horribly before they died.

Maggie took the file from her shaking hands to read for herself and Nik absently picked up the next folder. What she read made her frown.

“This doesn’t make sense,” she muttered and picked up the last file. “Maggie,” she said after looking at the top page, “these are death certificates for both of them too.”

Maggie nodded, “ya, the system wasn’t perfect. There are lots of duplicate records.”

“Na, these aren’t duplicates. These are different.”

“Different? How?”

“These say that they died from exposure to the vacuum. That they were kidnapped by slavers and during pursuit by a Martian Naval ship, the slaver’s ship was fatally damaged and experienced explosive decompression. There’s no mention of exsanguination.”

“That can’t be right. Double check the names on the certificates. I must have grabbed the wrong files.”

“Na, the names and dates of birth are identical, but…,” she trailed off.

“What?”

“The date of death is two days later that the date on the other certificates.”

Maggie grabbed the file and compared the certificates. “You’re right. They were signed by different doctors, too. I don’t know this second doctor, either. Dr. Donald Griffith. Odd, I knew all the doctors on the station at the time.”

Nik pulled out the handheld that Naomi had given her and looked up the name. “This says he’s a retired Martian Naval Officer.” She paused, “those second records say that the ship they were on was fired upon by a Martian Naval vessel, right?”

Maggie checked the file, “ya.”

“And my family came from Mars.”

Both women were silent in thought. It couldn’t be a coincidence, Nik thought to herself.

Sighing, she closed the files. If there was something wrong here, the trail was almost twenty years old. She had more pressing problems right now that required her attention.

“We have records for me and the twins now. Can you use these to get us in the system?”

Maggie hummed to herself, considering. Nik had noticed that the woman’s habit of talking to herself had declined since they had started including her in their plans for the future. She seemed more focused and less distracted. Having companionship, even if it was just Mouse, had made a big difference in the woman’s mental state.

"It shouldn’t take much. The boys are belters and will get belter IDs. What about you? You were born on Mars. If I put in a request, I could get your birth record and get you a Martian ID.”

Nik was already shaking her fist, “na, I may have been born on Mars, but I’m belter now. Get me a belter ID. It will be quicker. Less questions.”

“You got it, Niki Child,” Maggie told her. “It will only take a few days.”

“What about Mouse? No luck on her records?”

“Na, Child. We don’t even know her real name. But,” she turned and dug through a pile, “I found this.” She held out a single film.

Taking it, Nik read the contents, “this is a birth record for a girl born on this station around the same age as Mouse.”

“That record is incomplete. The child died a few days later from complications, but it was never entered in the record because her parents shipped out to Ceres. We can use this record for the girl, and no one will ever know it’s not her.”

“Luyne,” the name rolled off Nik’s tongue. She smiled at Maggie, “it’s perfect.”


	9. Chapter 9

The hall leading to the office in the VIP ring was barely wide enough for the smallest loader Roggi could procure for the job. He had to back it down the hall to the office because there was no space to turn it around. While he was positioning it outside the office, Nik was using a torch to cut the false wall that had been installed over the doorway. When it was free, Hopper and Lucky wrestled it out of the way and Nik rigged temporary power to the door.

When activated, the door groaned and opened slowly, only to grind to a stop before it opened completely. Fortunately, the opening was more than adequate to move the boxes. Unfortunately, that was all the door had left in it. When Nik attempted to close it, it didn’t move.

“Kula buro,” she muttered. Normally, she would try to fix it, but today there was no time.

“Kom on, let’s get these boxes loaded,” she told the others.

Maggi stayed in the hall as a lookout with Mouse while the other four hauled box after box of food out of the forgotten room and loaded them on the vehicle. Because of the size constraint posed by access, the loader was full before even half of the boxes were moved.

“That’s a lot of food,” Roggi grinned. “We’re gonna be rich.”

“What about the rest of it?” Hopper asked. 

“We could just leave it and not get greedy,” Maggie suggested.

Roggi disagreed, “those welwallas that are picking this station apart don’t need this food. All they would do is sell it back to the same people it came from. We,” he indicated the group, “and everyone left here need this food. At the very least, we can sell what we don’t need to beltas going through the rings.”

Everyone agreed. Together, they pushed the cabinets in front of the opening since the door wasn’t going to budge. They would come back the next day to get the rest.

****

Back at Maggie’s the four of them lay on their sleeping mats surrounded by the boxes of food and imagined what life on Ganymede would be like. Having been on Tyco their entire lives, -Nik had no memories of life before the station- they had nothing to compare it to, only excerpts that Nik read to them from the handheld.

The twins were excited when she read off a list of jobs available. Hopper wanted to pilot one of the freighters used to ferry the food produced on the moon to destinations within the belt. He wanted to see the system.

“Maybe even Earth. One day,” he said proudly.

“You’ll have to go to school,” Nik pointed out.

The boy hesitated, weighing his desire to be a pilot and his disdain for formal education, then he nodded, “I can do that.”

“What about you, Lucky?” she asked his twin. “Do you want to be a pilot too?

He shook his head, “na. I wanna learn how to grow things.”

“Like a botanist?” she asked.

“Ya, kind of. Before they died, I remember our Ma and Pop talking about it. How important crops were for the future of the belt. How we couldn’t rely on others for our food or we would never be a truly free people.”

His brother sat up, “I don’t remember that.”

“You wouldn’t. You were too busy running around, with the other children. I was sick and stayed inside with Ma a lot. She was worried about taking us with them to Eros. I think that’s why they left us here. They didn’t want me to get sicker. But they were going to come back.”

“I found out my parents didn’t abandon me either,” Nik said in a quiet voice. “They were killed.”

They lay in silence for a while. 

“Do you remember your names?” she broke the silence.

“Josh,” Lucky answered.

“Sean,” his brother said.

“Your last name in Byrne. You were born here on this station.”

“What about you?” Lucky asked.

“Nicolette Bordini,” she stumbled over the name slightly, her voice thick with emotion. “I was born on Mars.”

A small hand tugged on her arm, “do I have a name?”

“Soyá,” she smiled. “Luyne Yen. You were born here on the station.”

“Luyne Yen,” Mouse repeated softly.

Nik stroked her hair, “a beautiful name for a beautiful girl. Now, let’s get some sleep. We have a busy day tomorrow.” She kissed the girl on the cheek, “night, Luyne.”

“Night, Nik. Luv you.”

“Mi du ámolof to.”

****

The next “night” Nik, Roggi, and the boys went back to the office. Maggie was going to start the process of getting their IDs and she had Mouse, now Luyne as she insisted on being called, with her.

Entering the office, they could see immediately that someone had been in there since they left. The cabinets were pushed aside, revealing the dark opening in the wall.

“Felota,” Roggi said.

“Give me the light,” Nik held her hand out to Hopper, “and get back outside. Get ready to run.”

When the boys and Roggi had disappeared into the hall and she heard the loader start back up, she crept forward and carefully shown the light into the room. The remaining boxes were tumbled out of their neat stacks, many torn open with their valuable contents spilled out onto the floor. Stepping inside, she stepped on something soft. Looking down, she saw that she was standing on an open packet, its contents squirting out. Littered around the room, other packets were likewise opened and discarded on the floor.

“What a fucking waste,” she muttered disgusted.

She called the others back in to show them.

“Who would do this? Waste all this food?”

“Inners, that’s who,” Roggi spit.

“What are we going to do?” Lucky asked.

“We are sticking to the plan,” Nik said resolutely. “Let’s get as much of this as we can out of here before they come back and ruin more of it.”

Together, they started loading the unopened boxes into the loader. They had just started gathering up the contents of some of the open boxes when Hopper hissed from the office.

“Someone’s coming!”

Nik dropped the packets in her hands and ran out to the hallway. Around the corner, only fifty meters away, she could see lights and hear voices approaching.

“Roggi, Hopper! Let’s go!” she called to them urgently. They didn’t need a confrontation with the men from a work crew.

The two came out carrying boxes just as the first man rounded the corner and spotted them.

“Stop!” he yelled and started towards them, his fellows on his heels.

They were too late to jump into the loader, get it started, and get out of there ahead of the crew, so Roggi dropped his box and reached into the back of the loader to pull out a large pipe wrench. Lucky already had a piece of pipe that he tossed to Nik then grabbed another for himself. Hopper hurried to put his box on the vehicle instead of just dropping it and grabbed a pipe for himself. They arranged themselves across the hall, between the loader and the men.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the leader of the crew stepped up to Roggi.

“We’re just taking these boxes up to share with the rest of the residents,” Roggi replied calmly.

“They’re not yours to take,” the man spat, his name over his pocket said “Mac”. “These belong to us.”

“Liar!” Lucky told him. “We found them. They been here for years. They’re not yours. They belong to the station!”

Mac laughed and his men with him. Nik counted seven of them, all carrying something that could be used as a weapon. Her and the boys would be no match up against them.

“And this station is ours,” Mac stepped closer to Roggi. “That means everything on it is ours, too. So just walk away right now, and I’ll forget about you trying to steal from us.”

Roggi didn’t move, “we aren’t stealing from you. We’re taking what rightfully belongs to us.”

Mac looked around him at Nik and the two boys. “And how are you going to keep us from just taking it from you? It’s just you, these two boys, and that scrawny girl. Back down, before we make you,” he pushed Roggi with the sledge in his hand, making him stagger back.

“Come on, guys, let’s leave it to them,” Nik hissed at the three.

“No!” Lucky yelled and leapt between the two men to take a swing at Mac.

The man easily blocked his pipe and backhanded the boy, sending him sprawling. More laughter erupted from the crew.

Roggi used the distraction to launch a punch and caught Mac solidly on the jaw. With an angry roar, Mac lunged at him, swinging his sledge. He aimed for Roggi’s knees, intending to bring him down quickly. As if the actions unfolded in slow motion, Nik watched Mac swing the sledge back just as Hopper rushed forward towards his prone brother. The head of the took struck the boy solidly in the side of his head with a sickening thud, dropping the boy instantly.

“Hopper!” Nik screamed running to him.

Kneeling by the boy, she could see that the side of his head was covered with blood. “We have to get him to the med bay.” She told Roggi.

“Yeah, belter trash, take your wounded and get the hell out of here,” Mac growled at Roggi.

Roggi drew back his pipe wrench and brandished it like a club, “I’ll make you pay for that Paxoníseki.”

“Roggi! Stop! It’s not worth it. I need your help,” Nik pleaded, trying to stop the violence before anyone else got hurt. “Please, Roggi. I can’t carry him.”

Lucky grabbed his arm to get his attention, “come on. Let them have it. There’s too many of them.”

“Sabaka!” Roggi snarled, but he backed away from the man before throwing his wrench into the back of the loader.

“Take the kid and get the hell out of here,” Mac told them.

Roggi gathered up the unconscious Hopper in his arms and let Nik lead them down the hall, away from the loader.

“Lucky,” Nik grabbed the boy and pulled him along with them. “Leave it, please. Run ahead and get Maggie to meet us at the med bay.” When the boy opened his mouth to argue, she gave him a hard shove. “Go! Now!”

With one last look over his shoulder, Lucky took off and disappeared from sight quickly.

“How bad is it?” Roggi asked her quietly.

“Im mal. Real bad.”

*****

Nik and Lucky paced back and forth outside the med bay, while Maggie sat nearby holding Mouse. Maggie had the medical staff ready by the time they arrived with the boy, but they quickly made it clear that she was not welcome inside while they worked on him. She had been exiled outside with the rest of them.

Roggi had returned to his maintenance shop to figure out how to report the loader as missing. Muttering threats under his breath, he promised Lucky that Mac and his crew were not going to get away with what they did. It did little to calm the already high-  
trung boy.

An hour passed before anyone from the staff came out to address them. The three of them crowded around the man and demanded in a barrage of questions to know what was happening to Hopper. Exasperated, the man held up his hands to quiet them.

“The blow fractured his skull and sent multiple fragments into his temporal lobe. The bleeding was severe, and we did everything we could to stabilize him, unfortunately, the damage was too widespread by the time you got him here.” He stopped here and looked at Lucky, “I’m sorry, Lad.”

“What?” Lucky’s eyes filled with tears. “What are you saying?”

The man put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, “he’s gone.”

Lucky froze in place, his mouth opening and closing without making any sound.

Nik reached out to wrap an arm around him, tears running down her face, but the boy shoved her away and bolted.

“Lucky!” she yelled after his retreating form and started after him, only to be detained by a hand on her arm.

“Leave him be, child,” Maggie told her. “Give him some time.”


	10. Chapter 10

Nik sat on her mat at Maggie’s, listlessly watching Mouse playing with her doll she had found in recycling and another that Maggie had given her. It had been a week since Hopper’s death and Lucky still wasn’t talking much to anyone. The only time she saw him at all was when he came by to grab some food, but even that was sporadic. It was as if the windfall of combat rations was now contaminated. Nik could understand the sentiment; every bite tasted like ashes in her mouth.

It wasn’t just her and Lucky that were struggling. The entire station seemed to be on edge; everyone holding their breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Word had spread quickly of the boy’s death at the hands of a decom crew. The crews were primarily made up of belters, but they were being paid by Inners as were most of the foremen. As a group, the crews were viewed with hostility. 

Several belter ships had docked with the station during the last few days, ostentatiously to help ferry residents off station, but instead of taking people, they were bringing in people. OPA tattoos could be seen everywhere in the common areas. Inners had killed a Belter child. The station was a tinderbox, just waiting for a spark to set it aflame.

Her handheld chimed, drawing her out of her daze. It was set to alert her whenever a new ship docked so she could investigate it for suitability for securing transport for the five - no, now it was just four - of them. The last few that docked, she had quickly determined were unacceptable or were not taking on passengers.

Silencing the alert, Nik forced herself to climb to her feet. As shitty as she felt, she still had to get them off the station. Before she lost another friend.

“Maggie?”

She could hear the other woman’s rambling to herself in the other room. Since Hopper’s death, Maggie had gone back to talking to herself and had become more reclusive and erratic. She blamed herself in part for what happened, thinking that if she had been there, maybe things might have gone differently. Maybe she could have diffused the situation and prevented the violence. 

She wasn’t the only one thinking in terms of ‘maybe’. Nik understood how she felt, there was plenty of blame to go around. They should have left the moment they saw the opened boxes. They shouldn’t have been greedy and went back at all. Running with the boys for so long, she had forgotten they were just kids. She had no business involving them in something so potentially dangerous.

She sighed wearily. Blaming herself wasn’t getting her any closer to getting them off the station before someone else got hurt.

“Maggie!”

The muttering in the other room stopped and Maggie shuffled to the door between the two rooms. The woman had aged in the last week, the kind spark in her eyes gone, dark circles under her eyes, her posture more stooped than ever. Nik didn’t want to look in a mirror, sure that she looked no better.

“What is it, Niki child?”

“Another ship just docked. Watch Mouse for me?”

“Luyne!” the girl corrected.

“Watch Luyne for me?”

Maggie nodded, “ya, I’ll watch the little darling. Go.”

Nik stopped and dropped a kiss on the girl’s head, “keep an eye on Maggie,” she said in a low voice. “See if you can cheer her up?”

“Kay,” the child agreed, not looking up from her play. Even she had been affected by events. Withdrawing more into her play. She woke Nik up last night crying from a bad dream and had to be rocked back to sleep.

“See you in a bit, mali mi.”

****

The corridors to the docks were strangely quiet. Groups of residents clustered and talked softly, many pausing as Nik passed, some nodding a silent greeting. Since she had made the transition from being a station orphan to an adult woman, more people took notice of her in passing. And she didn’t go out of her way to avoid being seen any more, either.

“Oye, Nik.”

She stopped and turned towards the familiar voice. Roggi was hurrying down the corridor to her.

“Oye, Roggi, what’s up?”

“Have you heard?”

“Heard what?”

Roggi looked around nervously before continuing, “they’re sending Marines.”

Nik blinked, not understanding, “who’s sending Marines? Where?”

Roggi rolled his eyes and pulled Nik to the side of the corridor, out of the main flow of traffic. “The contractors requested more security, so Mars is sending a contingent of Marines to crack down on the sabotage and protect the crews.”

“Protect the crews? Are you serious?” Nik’s voice rose and Roggi shushed her. “Are you serious?” she continued, softer. “We are the ones that need protection from them, not the other way around.”

Roggi nodded his agreement, “and we’re gonna get it too.”

“What do you mean?”

“OPA is sending people here to do something about what happened.”

“No, no, no,” she groaned. “That’s the last thing we need here, Roggi! A bunch of OPA thugs going up against Marines? They’ll turn this station into a war zone.”

Roggi stood up straighter and looked at her disdainfully, “someone needs to do something. I thought you of all people would understand. We can’t let them get away with killing one of ours.”

At her scowl, he met her eyes challengingly, “Lucky understands. He’s doing something about it. He’s going to make them pay for what they did.”

“Whoa, wait,” she grabbed his arm. “What is Lucky into, Roggi?”

Roggi smiled proudly and pointed to a new tattoo on his neck, “We know what side we’re on, Nik. You need to decide if you’re on our side. Or stay out of the way.”

He shook her hand off and strode away.

“He’s just a kid, Roggi!” she called after him. “He’s just a kid!”

****

“I did it!” she announced proudly as she walked into Maggie’s rooms.

“Did what?” Maggie didn’t look up from the files she was going through at her desk.

“I got us passage off this heap! We leave in three days!”

Maggie did look up at that. “Really? How? Where?”

Nik laughed, a true happy laugh, the first she had uttered in the last week. “Ya, really. There’s a lithium freighter on its way to Mars at the docks right now. They’re making a stop at Ganymede to drop off some botanist with alien plant samples for study and they’re willing to take the four of us.”

With a delighted whoop, Nik picked up Mouse and swung her around in a spin before hugging her.

“We’re going to our new home in three days!”

She looked at Maggie over the girl’s shoulder, “I just got to get Lucky, now.”

Setting Mouse back down she urged her to go play before drawing Maggie into the other room.

“What, child?”

“I ran into Roggi on the way to the docks. He and Lucky have joined an OPA gang and they are planning something.”

“That boy don’t have a bit of sense, but he’s a good kid. He’ll come around,” Maggie assured her.

“It gets worse. They’re sending in some Marines to keep the peace.”

Maggie looked at her in shock, “Marines? That’s just asking for all hell to break loose.”

“I know. That’s why we got to get out of here as soon as we can. I just hope three days is soon enough.”

****

Later that evening, Nik sought Lucky out. She expected to find him in the utility area they used to call home. What she didn’t expect was the group of OPA there with him.

“Nik!” Lucky called out to her as she stood uncertainly at the edge of the area. He came running up to her, a spark of excitement in his eyes.

“Roggi said he talked to you earlier. I knew you’d come!”

“Lucky, why are all these people here?”

He grinned and drew himself up proudly, “they’re OPA and they’re gonna help us get those pashangwalas that kilt Hopper.”

“Na, Lucky, they’re just going to cause trouble and get more people hurt, including you. We gotta go,” she grabbed his arm to pull him after her.

He refused to follow, “Na, Nik, I’m not going anywhere. Mi Belta, I’m going to fight.”

She pulled on his arm with more force, “na, you’re going to get yourself killed.”

He yanked his arm free and shoved her away, “gut then. I forgot you’re one of them. To pomang, from Mars. Just pretending to be a Belta, like you pretended to be a kid. Like you’re pretending to be my friend. Well, I got real friends now,” he gestured to the people around them watching their exchange. “I don’t need you, Nik. Go. Get out of here. You’re not wanted.” 

Just for emphasis, he pushed her again and she stumbled, losing her balance, and fell backwards, landing on her ass. The people around them laughed. Pushing herself to her feet, she faced Lucky.

“I’m not giving up on you. You’re my kopeng. I won’t stand by and let you get yourself killed.”

“You’re not my friend,” Lucky spat on the ground at her feet. “You’re nothing.” He turned his back to her and walked away. One by one, the group around her turned away also, leaving her alone in the space she used to call home.

****

“I don’t know what to do, Maggie,” Nik hung her head dejectedly as she told the other woman what had happened. “I can’t get through to him.”

Maggie patted her hand sympathetically, “you can’t give up on him, child. He’s angry and hurt. Not thinking with his head,” she pointed to her own head for emphasis. “He’s thinking with his heart and it is broken right now.”

“I know that, but I’m lost here. I’ve never played the grown up.”

‘Right now, the only one’s offering him any comfort are those people he’s running with. Go back and offer him a different kind of comfort. You knew his brother, those people don’t. You know him. He needs to be reminded of that.”

Swiping her nose with her sleeve, Nik sniffled. “You’re right.”

“Of course, I’m right! I’m always right. Now, quit your sniveling and look at what I found.” She pulled out another file and brandished it. “When I read the report on your folk’s death, the one with the beatings not the other one, I thought it sounded familiar. So, I started digging and I found this.”

Nik took the file from her and opened it. Inside was another death certificate; this one for a Lily-Anne Tinsley. She looked up at Maggie questioningly.

“Go ahead, keep reading,” she urged.

The date of Lily-Anne’s death was ten days after her parents’ and, as she continued reading, she had died in a similar fashion. Tortured, beaten, then strangled.

“Do you think her death is related to my folks?”

“If it isn’t, it’s a big coincidence, don’t you think?”

There was a picture in the file, but it was taken after her death with her face to bloody and swollen to be able to identify.

“She’s not from Mars, Maggie.”

“I know, but still.”

Lily-Anne was from Luna. What was she doing out here on Tyco station and what connection, if any, did she have to Nik’s parents?

Nik set the file down and pulled out her handheld. She queried Lily-Anne Tinsley from Luna.

“It says here she was a seismologist studying the effects of the Lunar colonies on the integrity of the moon. What was she doing on a space station?”

The short article had a link to images related to Lily-Anne. A picture of the woman came up immediately. Nik sucked in her breath with surprise.

“I know this woman.”

“There’s no way, she died when you were little.”

“No, Maggie,” Nik insisted. “I saw this woman. She came to visit my parents here before they were killed. And,” her voice tapered off.

“And?”

Nik held up her hand to silence Maggie as memories long forgotten surfaced. They were the murky and disjointed memories of a half-starved little girl grieving over the loss of her parents, but she was quickly filling in the blanks.

“She’s the one that checked me out of the medical bay. She said she was my aunt.”

Nik remembered snippets of the woman’s rooms on the station. Of her being nervous and scared. Children are never given enough credit for understanding what is going on around them. In all actuality, they are adept at picking up on emotions and tensions. They might not understand the cause of these emotions, but they are profoundly affected by them. She remembered waking up from bad dreams night after night and the woman holding her and telling her everything would be alright. She could remember the smell of the woman’s powder, citrus and floral, over the bitter smell of her sweat.

But things weren’t alright. After a few days, Lily-Anne left her room with Nik in tow. She remembered being led to a dark, crowded place, possibly a storeroom. She was scared, they were being followed.

“I need you to be brave and hide, Niki.”

Lily-Anne pulled something from her pocket and dropped it over Nik’s head.

“This belonged to your mother. Keep it safe, okay?”

It was the gray marble pendant that she now wore on her wrist.

“I need you to hide now. I’ll come back for you when it’s safe.”

Nik remembered crawling into a hole in the wall and a box being shoved over the opening. Later, when the woman didn’t return, she tried to push it out of the way, but she was too little to make it move.

“After a while, I crawled down the duct and ended up in one of the maintenance tunnels. I wandered around for a long time before a group of kids found me and took me in.” She looked down at her bracelet. “I always thought my mother had given this to me. I guess I was confusing Lily-Anne with her.”

“Child, you had endured trauma upon trauma. It’s understandable that your memories would get jumbled up some.” She held out her hand, “let’s see that. Maybe it’s important.”

“I don’t know how it would be,” she held out her wrist for inspection. “It’s just a gray marble.”

Just then, her handheld chimed. Another ship had docked. Nik acknowledged the alert and was about to cancel it when she noticed what ship had docked.

“Shit, the Marines are here.”


	11. Chapter 11

The arrival of the Martian Marines changed the dynamics of the station. Where before it had still felt like it belonged to the residents and the decommissioning crews were interlopers, now it felt like an occupation and the residents were no longer welcome. Check points were set up in strategic areas and residents were subject to being searched at the whim of the marines.

Anyone with an OPA tattoo was a target. After several fights had broken out between the marines and gangs, the detention area on the station was full and they were put on lock-down. No ships could dock or leave.

Nik was fuming in Maggie’s rooms over the delay of their departure when good news arrived. The UN, Mars, and OPA leaders had agreed to mediation. Help was on the way in the form of James Holden.

The day before the Roci was scheduled to arrive, the entire station seemed to hold its breath. True, Holden had been a champion of the Belters for years and Naomi Nagata was a belter, but he was from earth and the rest of his crew consisted of a former Martian Naval pilot and another Earther. He took orders and reported to the UN Secretary General. No one was sure which side he would be on and they all hoped he would side with them.

In the meantime, Nik sought Lucky out. She found him still in the utility area. He was sitting on the top of a cabinet with his back against the wall near his and Hoppers old sleeping mats. Silently, she climbed up to join him. From this vantage, she could see everyone in the area coming and going; who was talking to who; who was sitting alone. It was a good spot.

They sat in silence for a while before Lucky spoke.

“Hopper would have hated this. All these strangers in our space. To them this is just a hiding place to avoid the Marines. They don’t understand that this was our home.”

Nick didn’t respond, she just leaned her should into his. The boy drew a shaky breath.

“We had some good times here,” he sniffled.

“We did. Remember the time Hopper found that remote drone?”

Lucky laughed, “ya, he found it in a garbage heap. Thought he found something real special.”

Nik laughed, “found out fast why no one wanted it.” She pointed to a spot on the wall to their left, “the scorch mark is still there where it crashed and burned.”

“It smelled like burnt polymer in here for weeks.”

“What about that time he stole that shipment of real chili peppers of that VIP cruiser?”

His body shook with suppressed laughter, “he stuck a whole one in his mouth because I dared him!”

“He was bawling and snotting, tears running out of his eyes as he ran around looking for anything to stop the burn.”

“You told him grease would help, so he licked that old scrubber seal.”

“It just made it worse!”

They were both shaking with laughter by then. As it died down, tears formed in Lucky’s eyes and ran down his face.

“I miss him so much, Nik.”

She wrapped her arm around him and pulled him down to her so she could hug him. He was taller than she was now, and he had to bend down to put his head on her shoulder. He was growing up so fast.

She just held him while he cried, letting out all the grief he had been holding up inside. Some of the Belters in the area glanced up, but they left the two alone. After a while, the tears dried up and he stopped shaking, but he didn’t pull out of her hug.

“What am I going to do without him?”

“I don’t know, Lucky, but I do know you will figure it out in your own time,” she assured him. “And I will be here for you as long as you need me.”

When he straightened up and whipped his face with his sleeve, he said, “thank you, Nik.” A pause, then, “I’m sorry about what I said to you. You are my friend.”

“I know. And I’m sorry about what I said to you. Wait,” she held up a hand when he started to say something else, “I still don’t like what’s going on and I’m still worried to death about you, but I don’t want to get into that right now.”  
She wasn’t going to push him. Not yet, not now. She had to regain his trust first.

****

The day after the Roci arrived, Nik let her impatience get the best of her and made her way to the docks to check in with the captain of the freighter. She wanted to be sure they still had a berth on board for when the ship was finally allowed to depart, plus she hoped to get some news other than what was filtering down to the residents and being broadcast.

There was a marine checkpoint at the entrance to the docks. As the sergeant scanned her new ID she looked around. There were only two ships docked from the belt, her freighter and another, smaller vessel that looked cobbled together form the carcasses of other, older vessels. At the end of its ramp, a group of armed marines stood guard. What the hell could be so important about that piece of junk?

“Miss Bordini?” Nik realized the sergeant had spoken her name several times.

“I’m sorry?”

“Reason for visiting the docks,” he restated with impatience.

“I have business with the captain of the Villanueva,” she nodded to the freighter.

The sergeant looked at her skeptically, “what kind of business?”

“I have passage booked for me and family and I just want to ensure we will be leaving when you bosses lift the lockdown.”

He nodded, accepting her reason. “Go ahead, but you will be searched before you’re allowed to leave the docks afterwards.” At her surprised look, he added, “wouldn’t want you taking any contraband off the ship.”

“Of course not.”

“You may go.”

Making her way through the barricade, she walked down the dock towards the Villanueva. Her path took her past the Roci. Compared to the freighter and the other Belter ship, the Roci was impressive, but now the dock also held numerous Martian ships that were newer. Few of them had seen battle from their looks. Beside them, the Roci looked exactly like what it was, a well-used, aging warship. Its hull was marred with scorch marks and scratches. Pieces were dented, broken, or missing altogether. There were so many patches welded on, that the original markings were all but gone. Still, despite all the wear and tear, it still looked solid and stood proudly in its berth.

Someone was hanging from the side of the ship, welding one of the patches. As she drew near, he stopped welding and lifted his face shield to look down at her. He was high up on the craft, but even at a distance, she knew it was Amos. A shiver went down her spine as she looked up at him. He raised a hand and gave her a mocking salute. Shaking her head, she continued hurriedly down the dock, trying to ignore the feeling that he was watching her the entire way. She couldn’t shake that feeling until she entered the Villanueva.

Mario Hayek, the captain, was just as anxious as she was to get off the Tyco. They were already running behind schedule and if they weren’t being offered a bonus for getting the samples to Ganymede, Nik and her friends would have been out of luck. As it was, they still had passage to the moon. His employers were in negotiations with the Martian Navy to get the freighter on its way in the near future.

“When we get the green light, you guys better get your asses here in a hurry. In fact, you might be better off to go ahead and move your stuff on board now and stay here,” he told her when he showed her the small room they would be sharing for the trip. It was going to be crowded, but the children had lived in worse conditions. It would do.

“I’ll talk to them about it and let you know,” she promised. The idea had merit. If they were staying on the ship while it was docked, then they would most assuredly not be left behind when it departed.

“What do you plan to do on Ganymede?”

“I’m a pretty good repair tech, so I hope I can get a job with the reconstruction,” she told him.

“Repair tech? Huh,” he grunted, “maybe I have some work for you on the trip. My tech got sick and stayed behind. Shit is always breaking on this bucket.”

Nik hid her grin; it wouldn’t do to appear too eager. “Maybe we can work something out.”

****

Exiting the freighter, Nik felt better than she had in days. Everything was set up. There was only one hurdle left to overcome: Lucky. But after their time together a couple days ago, she was confident she could bring the boy around.

Waiting for her at the Roci was Naomi.

“Nik?” the woman greeted her with a confused frown.

“Oye, Naomi. Kewe to?”

“My God, it is you,” she covered her mouth with a slim hand. “I didn’t believe Amos when he said he saw you down here.” She stopped and gestured, “I don’t understand.”

Nik realized that Naomi was referring to her looking like an adult, not a child, and smile sheepishly, “ya, that’s a long story.”

“Fair enough, but what are you still doing here? I thought you and the others would have been long gone by now.”

“All the ships taking on passengers were going to wrong direction. We’re still trying to get to Ganymede.”

“I take it Captain Hayek is going there?”

Nik nodded, “ya. As soon as he’s allowed to leave, we’ll be gone.”

“He’s good people. You’ll be safe on his ship,” she nodded approvingly, then smiled. “Where is Hopper? He didn’t come with you? He made quite the impression on Alex.”

At Niks sad look she frowned, “what happened?”

“You know the kid that was killed by the decom crew?”

Naomi’s eyes widened with shock. “Oh, no,” she said sadly, “that was Hopper?”

Nik couldn’t answer with the huge lump in her throat, so she nodded.

“I’m so sorry, Nik. He was a good kid.”

“Ya,” Nik whispered, “he was. But it didn’t save him, did it?”

“No, it didn’t.” Naomi paused for a moment, considering, “why don’t you come up for a bit. We can talk, if you want.”

The offer was tempting, but Nik took a step back. “Na, I have another brother I need to save before it’s too late.” She turned away, “oyedeng, Naomi.”

“Nik!” Naomi called after her as she hurried to the check point.

She didn’t answer and didn’t look back.


	12. Chapter 12

By the time Nik got back to Maggie’s, word had reached the residents that the lockdown was going to be lifted soon. Holden was making headway with his negotiations between the crews and the residents. A deal had been reached that would give a third of the salvage to the Belters to use in whatever manner they chose.

“See, Nik!” Maggie grinned. “I told you Holden was for the belt. He may be an Earther by birth, but he’s a Belta by heart.”

Nik had to agree with her friend, “ya, he’s good.” She figured Naomi had a lot of influence on his love of the belt, but, hey, they would take what they could get.

That night disaster struck and stopped all progress. Thinking to get a head start claiming their third of the salvage, residents of the station, urged on and aided by one of the OPA gangs, broke into a storage bay and took several scrubbers and some small-scale reactors. Marines responded to calls from the on-duty crew. They surrounded the civilians and ordered them to relinquish the parts and leave the area.

Someone in the crowd threw a wrench at one of the marines, striking his weapon, causing him to discharge it into the air over the crowd. The crowd believed he was firing on them and defended themselves accordingly, many rushing the marines with the tools in their hands, but some among the crowd had firearms in their possession and fired on the marines. The marines fired back and a full-scale assault resulted in the deaths of ten civilians and one marine.

Nik and Maggie woke to chaos. The PA system and all monitors were announcing a total lockdown for the residents of the station. They were ordered to stay in their homes. In addition, Marines were doing room to room searches looking for OPA members. A banging on the door and a demand for entry scared Mouse, who cried the entire time they were in Maggie’s rooms.

When they left, Nik turned to Maggie in panic, “I’ve got to get Lucky away from those people before he gets killed.”

“What are you going to do, child? You heard. We’re on lockdown. We can’t go anywhere.”

Nik smiled cockily at her, “you forget, I’m a station rat. I can get to him without being seen.”

“Child, you are risking getting caught yourself,” Maggie admonished her. “Think about Mouse. Who’s going to take care of her if something happens to you?”

Nik stood on her toes and kissed the woman on the cheek, “you know you will, Maggie, you’re not fooling me. Besides,” she backed away, “I won’t get caught. I never do.”

****

The main freight elevator had been sabotaged in the aftermath of the shooting, forcing the decom crews to move equipment and salvage through more populated areas. Teams of marines patrolled the main corridors of the station to protect the crews. The corridor outside Maggie’s was busy despite the lockdown. Like a ghost, Nik slipped out of Maggie’s rooms, darted between loaders, and disappeared. In a dark hydroponics alcove, she ducked behind a water reclamation unit and slipped between pipes into the maintenance tunnel beneath it. She had to crawl on her belly for several meters before the tunnel opened enough for her to walk stooped over. 

She had to double back twice to avoid others in the maintenance tunnels; she wasn’t the only resident not abiding by the lockdown. So far, though, the marines were not an issue, but that probably wouldn’t last long. 

It took Nik longer than usual to reach the utility area. When she crept out of the tunnel, it was quiet. Garbage and discarded equipment littered the open area, hinting that it had recently been occupied, but now it was empty.

“Oh, no, no, no,” she chewed her lip, looking around. Where was Lucky?

Nik searched the tunnels for hours. She checked all the usual spots, places that she knew the twins had frequented often, but if he had been there, he had moved on. She ran into two groups of OPA, but neither knew the whereabouts of the boy.

Trying one last place before giving up, she headed for access tunnel that ended at a hydraulic panel high above one of the docks. Hopper had been the one that was obsessed with ships, not Lucky, but she was out of ideas.

Crawling out on the hydraulic lines carefully, she pulled herself to the edge and looked down. Two meters below her was the boy, sitting casually on the panel, his legs hanging over the edge. This high up, he had a clear view of all the ships in their berths.

Climbing down the lines, she stepped onto the panel next to Lucky. He grabbed one of her hands to steady her until she sat next to him.

“Didn’t expect to find you here,” she tried to sound casual.

“Hopper loved coming here to watch the ships.”

“Ya, I know.”

They sat in silence and watched the flurry of activity below.

“He was so excited about going to Ganymede,” Lucky broke the silence.

“Ya, he wanted to travel so bad.”

“Na, not just that,” Lucky corrected her. “He really wanted to go to Ganymede so he could go to school and become a pilot.”

“I thought he didn’t want to go to school?”

“Na, it was just an act. He hated that he never got to go to one. Our parents tried, but they were gone, and we were all alone here.”

“I see.” She did understand. Her parents had been scientists and she was just an uneducated station rat.

Movement at the Villanueva below caught her eye. It looked like they were loading stores onto the ship.

“Oh, no,” she breathed, pulling her handheld out. She had silenced it while she was creeping around in the tunnels. There was a notification from Captain Hayek.

“Shit, shit!” The freighter had been cleared to leave. It was departing in two hours. The message was half an hour old. “They’re leaving.”

She stood and looked down at Lucky, “I’ve got to go get the others. We have to be on that ship when it leaves.”

Lucky stood up beside her, “you need to avoid the cargo dock, the engineering wing, and the comm center.”

She paused, “what do you know?”

He refused to meet her eyes, “I can’t tell you.”

Nik grabbed Lucky by the shoulders and gave him a shake, “tell me!”

The boy flushed and looked at her defiantly, “we’re gonna to make them pay for everything they done.”

“How?”

He couldn’t maintain his bravado and looked down again. She gave him another shake, “How?”

When he looked up this time, his eyes were flashing and his mouth was set in a hard line, “I’m not a little kid you can boss around anymore, Nik.”

He shoved her away and she fell back against the hydraulic lines. The panel they were on was old, and wasn’t meant to hold weight, much less the weight of two young people. With a crack and a groan, one of the support brackets pulled loose from the bulkhead and the panel tipped forward, throwing Lucky off balance.

His arms flailed wildly as he tried to regain his footing, but as his weight shifted with the tilt of the panel, it tipped even further. Nik watched in horror as the boy toppled backwards off the panel.

“Lucky!” Her voice echoed off the open structure of the upper reaches of the bay and was swallowed by the din below.

Hooking her foot between two of the lines, she cautiously loosened her tight grip on the support she had grabbed. She lay down on the top of the panel and leaned out to look down. Expecting to see Lucky’s body, lying lifelessly on the grating far below, she was shocked to see him hanging from a loop of hose coming out of the bottom of the panel.

“Lucky,” she squeaked. “Hold on.”

“Hurry! It’s slick, I’m slipping,” his eyes were wide with fright. As if to demonstrate the truth of his statement, one of his hands slipped of the hose and he frantically struggled to get a better grip, his feet scrambling uselessly against the bulkhead.

Going as quickly as she could force herself to move, she eased more of her body away from the cables. She shoved her other foot between the lines with her other foot, hooking both around the lines for anchorage. Swallowing her fear of falling, she leaned over the edge of the panel and stretched out as far as she could reach. The panel groaned and shifted under them, making her freeze and hold her breath.

“Nik!” There was panic in Lucky’s voice.

Pushing down her own panic, she reached out with both hands; only her feet and the lines holding her weight. She was not going to lose Lucky.

“Can you reach my hands?” hanging down like she was, she didn’t have a good view of the boy below her.

“Maybe.”

There was a grunt and she felt his fingertips touch hers.

“That’s it. Just a little more,” she encouraged.

Another support pulled free and the panel dropped a few inches before being stopped by the lines going into it. It now leaned out from the wall at almost a 45° angle, only Nik’s hips were in contact with it now. The new angle gave her a better view of Lucky. His face was almost purple with the effort of holding on and tears were running down his face.

“Hold on, Lucky. You got this,” she coaxed. “Let go with one hand and grab my hand.” She stretched as far as she could, the muscles in her calves and shoulders protesting. She had never wished she was bigger more than she did at this moment.

“I can’t. I’ll fall,” Lucky panted.

“No, you won’t,” she told him calmly. “You’ve done more dangerous stuff than this just for fun with your brother. You never let being scared stop you from having fun, don’t let it kill you.”

Lucky closed his eyes for a second, took a breath, then release the hose and reached for her outstretched hand. They fumbled before grabbing each other securely.

“Gotcha!” Nik grinned. “Now, the other hand.”

“You can’t hold me. I’m too heavy.”

“Na, you’re good. Do it now!”

He let go and grabbed her free hand. Her shoulders and calves screamed and the added weight on them. Down below, she thought she heard shouts, but was too focused on Lucky for the moment.

The panel shuddered and groaned under her.

“Lucky, listen,” she said through her gritted teeth. “I’m not strong enough to pull you up. You’re going to have to climb up my body. Got it?”

“Ya, got it.”

Another shudder jarred her, and she groaned, “go now!”

Lucky was young and agile, with a strong will to live. At her command, he let go of one of her hands and grabbed her above the elbow on the same arm and pulled himself up. He did the same on the other arm.

“That’s it. Keep going.”

As he reached higher, the panel dropped slightly, and he slipped, falling. The cuff of his sleeve caught on the cord wrapped around her wrist, securing the gray marble, stopping his fall abruptly. Her left shoulder popped, and she let out a little scream.

“Go!”

The boy scrambled, grabbing her hands again, then pulling himself up her body hand over hand. When he was high enough, he grabbed the hydraulic lines and used them to pull himself the rest of the way.

Relieved of his weight, Nik used her good arm to push herself up. At that moment, the panel gave way under her and dropped several feet. Nik started to fall with it, but a hand caught the waist of her pants and held on.

“Gottcha!” Lucky cried and pulled her back up to the lines beside him. She wrapped her arms around the cables and took a shuddering breath. A cheer reached them from below and they both looked down. There was a crowd gathered watching the drama. Lucky waved at them and several waved back. They were too far away to make out any faces.

“Let’s get out of here,” she told him.

“Ya, you first.”

Lucky had to help her reach the tunnel entrance; her left arm was useless, and her legs were shaky and weak from the strain of holding both their weight. When they reached a wide section of the tunnel, they stopped for a rest.

“Taki, Nik. Taki,” he said quietly.

She reached out with her right hand and grasped his hand, giving it a squeeze, “there was no way I was losing you too.”

“I’m an idiot.”

“Ya, you are,” she agreed with a sad smile.

“You still want me to come with you to Ganymede?” he asked slowly.

“Soyá. You’re mi beratna. I would never leave you, even if I had to knock you out and carry you over my shoulder.” 

He laughed at that. “I’d like to see you try. I’m bigger than you now.”

“Ya, you are. You’re growing up.”

He was quiet for a moment, “I think I’d like to go to school and learn to be a pilot.”

“That’s great.” He was growing up. “Now, we gotta get moving. That freighter isn’t going to wait for us.”

She reached for her handheld to contact Maggie. It was gone.

“Shit!” she rolled her eyes. She couldn’t catch a break. “Let’s go.”

Back at the utility area, Lucky paused.

“I need to get something,” he told her. “Go ahead, I’ll meet you at the dock.”

She met his eyes, “I’m not leaving without all my family, Lucky. If you aren’t there, I’ll come looking for you.”

He nodded his understanding, “I’ll be there. I swear.”


	13. Chapter 13

Nik’s route back to Maggie’s was complicated. The marines had found out about the underworld of the station and were actively searching the larger tunnels. Her way was blocked more than once, forcing her to double back. Time was quickly running out for her and her family.

Finally, she decided to go for the abandoned maintenance elevator shaft. It would be a hard climb with her shoulder injured, but it was the only route that she was sure would be clear. Reaching the shaft four levels down from the broken panel that exited to a corridor, she started up. Using just her good arm and legs to climb the pipes and cables up the side of the shaft was slow going. She was acutely aware of how much time she was taking.

Half-way there, a head popped out of an intersecting tunnel near her, making her shriek and jump, losing her grip on the cables and sliding down nearly a meter before a hand grabbed her arm.

“Gotcha!” Lucky grinned.

“Lucky! What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at the docks.”

“There’s too many marines in the area, this was the only safe way,” he answered using the same logic as her.

“We’re running out of time,” she told him. “You’re faster than me, so I need you to go ahead of me and get them to the Villanueva.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be there. Just have them grab my things and I will meet all of you at the ship.”

“You sure?” he looked reluctant to leave her.

“Ya,” she assured him. “I’ll be there. I’ll just go to the forward gate instead of the one closest to the resident ring. We should get to the ship about the same time.”

“Kay, but you better hurry, Nik.”

“I will, just go,” she urged.

Without another word, Lucky scramble the rest of the way up the shaft and disappeared down the tunnel. With a groan, she reached up and grabbed a cable, pulling herself up. She just had one more level to climb now, but this was going to be a rough climb.

****

Exhausted, Nik pulled her body out of the vent duct and dropped to the floor. The landing jarred her shoulder, sending a blinding spike of pain through her. She bit her lip to keep from crying out and drew blood in the process. She had to be quiet if she was going to avoid the marines.

Keeping her back against the wall, she eased down the corridor to its intersection with the main concourse. As she drew near, she could hear a jumble of voices shouting angrily. Peering out cautiously, she saw a crowd of residents between her and the docking bay. Drawing back into the smaller corridor, she assessed her options. There weren’t any. It was dangerously close to time for the Villanueva to depart. This was the most direct route. Any other route and she would have to climb back down the elevator shaft. She wasn’t sure if she had the strength or the time. She would have to figure out how to get through the crowd.

Stepping out into the open, she strode boldly up to the rear of the crowd.

“What’s going on?” she asked the closest person.

He turned and looked down at her, “we’re making a stand. This is our home and we will not let a bunch of welwalas treat us like we don’t matter. We’re done taking their orders.”

He turned back and raised his arm in a cheer that was taken up by others around them.

“Idiots,” Nik muttered. “Gonna get yourselves killed and me along with you.”

Taking advantage of her small size, she slipped between two people and made her way towards the front of the group. Several times she was jostled, sending pain shooting down her arm and back, but she kept pressing forward.

Peaking between two large men, she could see the entrance to the docks.

“Fuck,” she muttered seeing the six armed marines were spread out across the concourse, blocking the way.

“Return to your quarters immediately,” the marine in the middle of the group ordered.

“Or what?” one of the men in front of her yelled back. “You gonna fire on a group of unarmed civilians?”

“The security of this station is our responsibility,” the marine responded. “We will take whatever measures we deem necessary.”

“This is our home!” someone yelled behind her.

“You aren’t welcome here!”

“Go home, paxoníseki!”

Various other threats and insults were shouted from members of the crowd as it surged forward towards the marines, taking Nik with it.

“Stand back!” a marine shouted.

Something flew over the heads of those in front and struck one of the marine’s power armor with a disgusting splat. It was followed by something more substantial that thudded against the marine on his left. The residents cheered. As a group, the line of marines raised their weapons, pointing them at the crowd.

“I’m ordering you to disperse and return to your quarters,” their leader barked.

There was a moment of hesitation from those around her, then someone to her left discharged a homemade weapon that fired shrapnel at the marines. Most of the pieces of metal ricocheted harmlessly off their armor, but a few of the pieces embedded themselves in the exposed joints. 

One of the marines cried out, “I’m hit!”

The air around Nik was suddenly filled with energy bolts, flying debris, and screams. The people at the front of the crowd tried to retreat from the shots coming at them while those in the rear surged forward. Nik was caught in the press of bodies and pushed forward towards the deadly barrage.

Something wet sprayed her face then the man to her left screamed and fell forward, a stump where his arm used to be. Time seemed to stand still as she stood there in shock staring at him while he writhed on the floor. Rooted in place, she couldn’t make her feet move even though every cell of her being screamed at her to turn and run.

A hand grabbed her arm and hauled her roughly backwards just in time to avoid being hit by a bolt of energy.

“Are you trying to die?” a familiar voice yelled.

She opened her mouth to answer, but no sound came out.

“Ah, fuck,” Amos said, picking her up and slinging her over his shoulder. “Hang on,” he ordered and started pushing his way through the throng.

Somehow, her shoulder no longer hurt. She wondered if it was gone like that man’s arm. She tried to turn her head to look, but, like her feet, it refused to move. She was almost ripped from his shoulder as someone pushed past them going towards the docks. 

The thought that they were going away from the docks snapped her out of her daze.

“We’re…,” she started, “hey! We’re going the wrong way! We’re going the wrong way.” She started to struggle against his grip on her.

“Be still,” he ordered and slapped her sharply across the ass.

“Ow! Put me down, damnit!” she struck out with her fist, which he ignored. “We. Are. Going. The. Wrong. Way.” She kicked with each word.

They reached the side corridor and he ducked into it before lowering her from his shoulder. Her legs refused to hold her weight and she sagged to the floor.

“Are you hurt?” Amos demanded, squatting in front of her.

“What?”

“Are you hurt?” he repeated slowly, as if she were stupid.

“No.”

“Do you have a death wish?”

She met his eyes and saw anger there. When he reached out to wipe something off her face with a large hand, she flinched and slapped it away, “what the hell?”

He held it up for her to see. It was smeared with blood and bits of flesh. She swallowed the bile that rose in her throat.

“What were you doing out there?” 

“I was trying to get to the docks,” she said weakly.

“By going through a riot?”

“It wasn’t a riot when I started.”

“What’s at the docks that’s important enough to get yourself killed over?”

“The Villanueva. It’s leaving and I’m supposed to be on it.”

“You’re not going to make it that way,” he pointed out.

Now that the immediate danger was past, she started to shake. She came close to dying out there and she knew it. She started to thank him for saving her, but her teeth chattered together instead.

“Hey,” Amos said gruffly, “it’s okay. We’ll get you there. Just not that way.”

When she didn’t reply, he stood and strode to the end of the corridor, carefully looking around the corner. Muttering a curse, he came back and crouched back down by her.

“Is there another way to the docks from here?”

But Nik was still in shock and couldn’t think. All she could picture in her mind was the man with his arm blown off screaming on the floor in front of her and his blood on her face. Suddenly, she had to get it off and started frantically rubbing her face with her sleeve.

“Hey, hey,” Amos grabbed her hand to stop her erratic movements. “Hey! I need you to focus, Kitten. Is there another way to the docks from here?”

Nik took a deep breath to calm down, “ya.”

“Show me.”

He rose and pulled her up with him. Her legs were still shaky, but at least they would hold her upright now.

“This way,” she pushed away from the wall.

“Hold on,” he grabbed her left arm to stop her, which of course chose that moment to regain feeling. Pain doubled her over.

“You said you weren’t hurt,” he looked at her accusingly.

“My shoulder,” she bit out between her teeth, “dislocated, I think.”

“Here, let me see.”

Amos pulled her jacket off her shoulder and felt it with his fingers, making her hiss in pain.

“Can you move it?”

She tried, but it hurt too much.

“I think you’re right.” He guided her back to the wall and made her face it.

“Brace yourself, this is going to hurt. A lot,” he warned.

She braced as well as she could as he splayed his hand on her shoulder blade and grasped her high on the bicep with the other. While holding her shoulder still, he pulled her arm back with a quick motion. Her eyes rolled back in her head and her legs would   
have given out again if he hadn’t been holding her up.

After a moment, he stepped back, releasing her.

“Can you move it now?”

She felt like throwing up, but carefully lifted her arm instead. It still hurt like a motherfucker, but not as bad and she could move it now.

“Ya, it will be okay.”

He looked at her appraisingly before nodding, “let’s go.”


	14. Chapter 14

There was no way she could backtrack and go up the elevator shaft with Amos; he simply wouldn’t fit through the panel that she could slip through with ease. Their only option was to take the main concourse away from the docks, go up four levels to the residence ring, and circle half-way around the station to the entrance on the opposite end of the docks. This route, unfortunately, left them exposed to anyone they came across, and the marines were everywhere. Amos compared them to something called a hornet’s nest, but she had no idea what that was.

The fight between the residents and the marines was all but over; the marines were cuffing the remaining men and women that were still standing and a doctor moved among those that were down. Amos and Nik darted across the way behind a vending machine, then along that wall until the curve of the station hid them from view. The elevators weren’t working, so they took the wide staircase up to the residence ring.

They reached Maggie’s rooms with no problem. Inside was deserted and all their belongings were gone. Nik breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe they made it to the freighter on time. On the desk were the files on her parents and Lily-Anne. She felt they were important and picked them up, putting them in a discarded satchel. Laying near them was the harmonica Hopper had won from his brother. She added it to the bag and, after a moment’s consideration, the silver bell that she had given Maggie.

“Let’s go,” she said as she joined Amos at the door.

He was looking around the room, “what’s in all the boxes?”

She grinned and went over to an open on, pulling out a packet and tossing it to him. He examined it with a frown.

“Food? These are all full of food?”

“Well, not all of them. Just these on this wall,” she pointed to them. “Hopper found them.” Her smile died at the memory.

“Come on, let’s get out of here.”

He looked at her questioningly at the change in her tone, but she ignored his look and left the rooms. He followed closely behind her.

“It’s not far now,” she told him.

They had only gone a few meters when they heard voices ahead. Ducking into an alcove, they listened intently. Nik couldn’t make out what they were saying, but Amos frowned.

“Marines.”

“What now? That’s our only way.”

He thought for a moment, “I have an idea, but you’re going to have to trust me.” He looked down at her.

She chewed her lip nervously but nodded.

“Let’s go.”

He stepped out, pulling her up beside him, and strode confidently towards the voices.

It was all Nik could do not to run when the two marines noticed their approach and raised their weapons.

“Stop right there!” the one on the right ordered.

Amos stopped and held up both his hands. “Hey, easy. I’m just on my way back to the Rocinante,” he said in a friendly voice. It was all Nik could do to keep from gaping at him. It was like he just turned into a different person.

“Identify yourself,” the marine demanded, not lowering his weapon.

“Amos Burton, off the Roci.”

The other marine stepped forward and scanned both of them while the first one kept his weapon pointed at them. “He’s telling the truth, but she’s a resident,” he told his companion.

“What are you doing with this girl?”

Amos shrugged, “Captain Holden wanted to question her. Apparently, she’s a witness to one of the attacks.”

The marine didn’t look convinced.

“Look, I’m just doing my job, just like you guys. I don’t want to be on this pile of junk any longer than you do. Come on, let me do my job.”

The two marines conferred quietly before turning back to them.

“You’ll have to come with…,”

The floor suddenly jumped out from under Niks feet. She stumbled and fell to her knees, catching herself with the hands, in the process jolting her injured shoulder. A deep rumble reverberated through the station and the walls vibrated.

“What the…?” one marine started to ask before his voice was drowned out by a shrill alarm.

“That was an explosion,” Amos helped her to her feet.

An explosion?

The air around them moved as a wind started to blow with force around them.

~Hull breach on level three, sector four~ the station’s PA system announced.

Hull breach? Something Lucky had said to her earlier suddenly made sense. Level thee, sector four was the engineering wing.

“We have to hurry, Amos!” she told him.

“They’ll seal the breach before we lose too much air, Kitten. Don’t worry.”

“Stop calling me that!” she snapped. “That’s not what I meant. There’re more bombs.”

“How do you know?” he demanded.

“Never mind how I know, I just do! We got to get off this station. Now.”

He searched her eyes and must have read the urgency in them because he turned to address the marines again, only to see them racing off in the other direction. Amos and Nik were no longer important to them.

Together they raced to the docking bay entrance. Nik ran awkwardly, holding her injured arm still with her good one. The bay was in chaos. The explosion had caused some damage, but people were panicking and scrambling all over the place. With the alarm blaring and lights flashing, it was disorienting. Nik looked desperately, trying to locate the Villanueva, but couldn’t find it.

“It’s gone,” she cried. “They left without me.”

“Worry about that later.”

Nik let him pull her along behind him as he made his way through the docking bay. They had left without her. The people she cared most about, her family. Gone. Just gone. She would cry if she wasn’t so numb on the inside. Her brain felt like it was filled with white noise and she blindly followed Amos. Twice she stumbled and would have fallen if he hadn’t held her up and kept them moving.

Another explosion shook the station, throwing her forward, into his back. She wrapped her arms around him and held on tightly. He was warm and solid under her touch and smelled like oil and welding fumes. Together, they half crouched as the deck heaved under their feet and debris rained down around them. Nearby, metal groaned in protest as an old ice hauler listed alarmingly to the side, breaking loose from some of its moorings. Belters and Inners alike scrambled out of its way as it slid across the thick metal grating pushing cargo loaders and crates in front of it. One man, caught between it and a railing, dove off the dock and plummeted the two-hundred meters to the next level, his scream lost in the cacophony of shrieking metal, roar of air, and blare of numerous alarms.

Amos sprang back into action at the crash of an I-beam only an arm’s length away from where they crouched.

“We gotta move!”

Together they dashed through the chaos, dodging people and falling metal. The Roci wasn’t far, but the dock was a minefield between them and it. Nik caught a glimpse of motion in the corner of her field of vision and shoved Amos hard to the right. They both staggered against a crate as an unmanned loader rolled past and slammed into an empty bin. The bin did little to slow the loader and together the two smashed into a rail, taking out a section before hurdling out into open air before dropping out of sight.

Amos looked at her a little dazed, “thanks.”

Before she could answer, another loud crash showered bright white sparks around them before the lights flickered and died, shrouding the dock in gloom.

The two of them took off again, going slower in the dim light and smoke from various small fires breaking out. Nik could see the Roci up ahead, over the foundering ice hauler. It was still solid in its moorings, but that could change in an instant. Especially since the ice hauler was still sliding, more slowly now with the mass it was pushing along with it, but its path took it directly at the Roci.

Skirting the hauler, they ran towards the ship. Its ramp was still down, and she could see someone standing on it. As they got closer, the person started waving frantically at them to hurry. Jumping over the last obstacle, they ran up the ramp and past Holden, who’s eyes widened when he saw her.

“Let’s go,” Amos told him.

Following them up the ramp into the ship, Holden punched the controls that pulled up the ramp and sealed the ship, “Alex, everyone’s on board. Get us out of here!”

Amos led her to a chair and pushed her down into it, “strap in,” then took one for himself and began to strap himself in. Nik mirrored his actions as the Roci shuddered and lifted off the dock.

“Folks, this is gonna be a rough one, so hold on to something,” Alex’s voice came over the speaker near her ear. Holden was scrambling up a ladder to the deck above and she could hear Naomi’s voice, raised to be heard over the sounds of the ship, but not make out the words.

“You okay?” Amos’s voice said in her ear, making her jump.

“I…,” she stumbled, “I think so.” Everything she had been through was starting to catch up with her, though, and her voice had a definite quiver in it. Her hands were trembling as well, and that tremor was working its way down her arms. There was a cold knot in her stomach to go along with the tremor. 

Nik was suddenly pressed down into her chair by an invisible force and the ship jerked sideways. The cold in her stomach expanded and she swallowed the excess saliva pooling in her mouth.

“… in space?” Amos was speaking in her ear again.

“What?” she didn’t catch the entire question.

“You every been in space?” he asked again.

“Ya, but I was too young to remember it.”

Instead of replying, he pushed some buttons on the mini console attached to his chair. Nik could see his lips moving as he spoke to someone, but she couldn’t hear what was said over the roar in her ears combined with the noise of the ship. Her chair had an identical console, which flashed an outline of a human body with several dots illuminated but it was out of her reach unless she leaned forward.

The ship lurched again. Nik felt the bile rising in her throat and hoped she didn’t puke.

“Sorry ‘bout that. There’s a helluva lot of debris flying around in here,” Alex’s voice said in her ear. “We’ll clear the bay doors in just a sec. Hold on.”

The ship’s movements smoothed out as promised, but the pressure bearing down on her increased dramatically. She could barely draw a breath and her field of vision started to narrow.

“Just stay calm,” Naomi’s disembodied voice told her. “I’m going to give you something to get through this.”

Before Nik could form an answer, there were multiple sharp pricks along the backside of her body and her world went dark.

****

The second time Nik woke up after being sedated by Naomi, she was better prepared for what she faced, but no less afraid. Her body ached dully from the high-G forces it endured while she was unconscious, but now she felt weightless. They were on the float.

Opening her eyes, she looked towards the murmur of voices nearby.

“She’s awake,” Amos looked her way the moment she moved her head. He was floating in the air while holding on to the headrest of a chair.

Naomi pushed off from the handrail she had been holding onto and flew gracefully towards her.

“How do you feel?”

“Like I was run over by a loader.”

“That’s to be expected for someone that’s never been off station like you. I’d tell you that you’ll get used to it, but that would be a lie,” Naomi told her with a wry smile. “But it will get better in time.”

“The others; they were supposed to be on the Villanueva. I need to know if they made it.” Nik started to unbuckle the straps that held her in the chair, but Naomi placed her hand over the buckle.

“I’ve already spoken to Captain Hayek. They’re on board and safe. The Eva is burning towards Ganymede right now.”

Panic gripped Nik, “I’m supposed to be with them. You have to take me to them!” She grabbed the woman’s hand with both of hers, “please.”

Holden answered from behind her, “we can’t right now. We’re helping with the rescue efforts for anyone left alive on Tyco. But we promise we will get you there when we’re through.”

His answer wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but she understood. Those were her people left on the station.

“How bad is it?”

“Bad,” Naomi answered and pulled up a view of the station on her console. 

Nik’s breath caught in her throat. She had never seen the station from outside, but there were plenty of images of it plastered throughout the station. It had looked like a shining jewel spinning against the blackness of space. Someone had compared it to a spinning top. Now it just looked like a mangled mass of metal wobbling erratically in a slow spin. The manufacturing dome was broken open like a food container that had been heated too long with the film still on. Throughout the twisted waste lights flashed sporadically, mostly red.

“You said there were people still alive?” she asked, swallowing down bile that rose at the thought.

“Ya,” Naomi answered, “we are getting dozens of distress signals.”

Taking a deep breath, Nik looked up at the woman floating by her chair, “what can I do to help?”

Naomi smiled at her question, “we were hoping you would ask.”


	15. Chapter 15

Listening to Naomi and Holden go over their plan, Nik was impressed at their ability to focus on helping others while keeping their ship out of danger. Holden would pilot the Roci’s shuttle into the docks on the side of the station that took the least amount of damage. He and Amos would take a small powered trolley loaded with tools and equipment they might need. Nik would stay in contact with them through their suits’ commlinks and guide them to the distress beacons they had selected.

While the three of them concentrated on rescue efforts within the station, Alex and Naomi would join the handful of ships conducting rescue missions on damaged and stranded ships around the station. Once the shuttle was at max capacity, Holden would pilot it back to the Roci and offload those rescued before going after more.

It could take hours to get everyone to safety, but the Roci along with the other ships were determined no one would be left behind to die. They would keep working as long as there was someone on the station still breathing.

Before they left to suit up, Holden stopped at Nik’s side.

“We’re counting on you to get us in and out safely. Are you sure you’re up to it?”

She met his eyes as well as she could strapped into the chair, “I’ve been running that station for almost twenty years. I know every passageway, tunnel, shaft, vent, and duct on it. If there is an opening that I can squeeze through, I know it.”

Holden held her gaze for a moment before nodding, “okay, then. Let’s do this.”

Nik watched him leave then turned her head to regard Amos, still hovering by the rail. He was also watching her with that same bland expression that chilled her on the station.

“Are you going to ask me if I know what I’m doing?” she challenged him, her gray eyes narrowing.

He shrugged that grating inner shrug with his shoulders, “Nah, I’m just trying to decide how much I trust you.”

She laughed, “trust me or not, go where I tell you to go, or not, it’s up to you. I don’t care what you do.” She couldn’t turn her back to him to physically show how little she cared, so she looked down at her console and pulled up the first distress beacon to start plotting a path to it.

She heard him move but refused to look up.

“Yeah. You might not care about us, but I do. They’re my family.”

“Then don’t be stupid and do what I tell you to do.”

“See you when we get back, Kitten.”

“Stop calling me that,” she snapped, looking up. But he was already gone though she could hear his chuckle from below.

“Paxoníseki,” she muttered to herself and went back to planning the route to the beacon.

****

The next hour was a flurry of activity not involving Nik. For a change, she did as she was told and stayed strapped in her chair out of harm’s way. To occupy herself and take her mind off the nagging fact that her family was on its way to Ganymede without her, she worked out primary, secondary, tertiary, and last-ditch routes from the dock to the first three targets.

“Roci, we are docked and ready to depart the shuttle,” Holden’s voice came over the commlink.

“Roger that, Hoss,” Alex replied. “We are on our way to rendezvous with the Ba Le. I’ll turn you over to your tour guide now. You’re on, Little Niki.”

“Don’t call me that.” What was these people’s deal? “Kay, Holden, if it’s clear, make your way to the second level. There should be a ladder to your left fifty meters on the inboard bulkhead.”

“There’s a bunch of equipment in the way, but I think we can find a path around it,” he replied.

There was silence on the line for a minute then, “got it. Looks clear.”

“Go up two levels from where you are now.”

Step by step, Nik guided them deeper into the station. It was slow going. Doors had to be pried open. Fallen structures climbed over. Metal and heavy equipment shifted as the wild rotation of the station destabilized anything not bolted down securely. She had to redirect them twice to get them to the room where survivors were trapped. A support beam had fallen and wedged itself into the door, keeping them from prying it open from the inside.

Amos used the cutting torch they brought with them on the trolley, then he and Holden forced the door open. Two of the four station residents from inside wanted to join Holden and Amos on their search for others. Holden didn’t want them to risk themselves plus they only had enough spare air bottles for the two of them. The residents argued that they knew the station better than two Inners. After some arguing back and forth, Nik offered a compromise: have them come along for the next group and help get that group back to the shuttle. One of the residents was a pilot and he could fly the shuttle back to the Roci, drop everyone off, and return to the station. That would free up Holden and Amos to go on to the third group before having to return to the shuttle. It would save them time, which was something some of the people on the station didn’t have in abundance.

The next group was more difficult to reach. It was closer to the one of the explosions and there was a lot of damage. The family was trapped in a narrow corridor that had collapsed on the inboard end. All that stood between the family and open space on the outboard end of the corridor was a poorly maintained containment door with a failing seal. When the secondary seal failed to engage, they had sealed the pinhole leaks with that material they had on hand, but the door was on the verge of complete failure.

Nik got the two men as close as she could to the family, but with the debris blocking the way from the main corridor system and the maintenance tunnels, the only way to get to them was through the ventilation ducts. There was only one catch: if the containment door’s seal failed completely, it would trigger the next layer of containment. That would not only cut off the corridor escape, but also the ventilation duct.

The ventilation system of the station was not one continuous system of ducts. Both the reality of living in the vacuum of space and the class system that had arose to divide the spacefaring humans had led to a division of the system into smaller systems that serviced different nodes. The docks, construction dome, inner residential rings, outer residential rings, and utility areas were all fed air through separate systems. Nodes within each area segmented the systems into smaller units that were connected through a series of containment gates that could be both manually and automatically controlled. The automated control system was designed to take over damage control during emergencies and the containment gates engaged to prevent the station’s depressurization.

The family was on the wrong side of the next containment gate.

“The only way in or out of that corridor is through the duct,” Nik sighed with exasperation after a futile attempt to find another way. “They are going to have to climb through it to get to you.”

“Their comms have failed, we can’t reach them to tell them that,” Holden told her for the second time.

“Then one of you has to climb through to them and lead them out,” she tried to sound reasonable.

“I’m not sending one of my crew in there with the risk of being cut off,” Holden snapped back at her.

“And I’m not going to let you take that risk either,” Amos chimed in.

“Then your only option is to move on to the next group. Hell, they could be dead. You ever think that’s why they aren’t responding?”

“No, that isn’t an option,” Holden replied. “We can hear someone banging on the wall in there.”

“That could be anything,” Amos told him.

“He’s right. It could be anything.”

“We are not going to abandon these people. Not if there’s a chance they’re still alive in there.” Holden refused to give in to reason. “Look again for another way.”

“I have looked!” she snapped back. “Another path hasn’t magically appeared since I last looked.”

There was a long pause.

“I’m going in,” Holden announced, finally giving up on a safer route.

“Cap…,” Amos started to object.

“I’m done arguing about it. Every minute we do nothing is less time for those people.”

“The closest vent is behind you about ten meters and to the right.”

Nik talked Holden through his slow crawl through the duct until he reached the trapped family. They were still alive, though the father was bleeding from a head wound and the youngest child’s arm hung at an odd angle. During the four hours they had been trapped, their comm unit had died, probably from old age. Holden had to crawl out of the duct and help each family member up using a rope that Amos held the other end of.

He gave the oldest child his comm unit and sent her ahead with Nik giving her directions. Then he helped the father climb up and passed him the injured little boy. The boy couldn’t crawl through the duct by himself, so Holden would have to pull him along. He would bring up the rear of the group with the boy.

“I’m at the T,” the girl said over the comm.

“Go left. This is the last turn, you should be able to see the open vent now,” Nik told her encouragingly. “You’re almost there.”

The girl was almost to the containment gate and her father wasn’t far behind her. Holden was lagging further back with the boy.

“I see it!” the girls excited cry rang in her ears. 

“I told you,” she answered with a grin of her own. “Belta take care of our own, setara mali.”

“I can feel the air now.”

Nik quit smiling, “what?”

“I can feel the air moving. It’s blowing my hair.”

“Keep going, I’ve got to check on something.” She shut down her link to the girl. “Amos?”

“Something’s wrong,” he told her without preamble.

“Can you feel air moving?”

“Yeah, I think there’s a breach.”

“Shit. Shit, that’s not good.” She opened the link to the girl. “Hey, I need you to turn around and tell me where everyone is.”

“Kay. Pappa is right behind me, but I don’t see the man with my beratna.”

“Call out to him for me. His name is Holden.”

“Holden!” the girl yelled making Nik cringe. “Holden!”

There was a pause, “I hear him. He hasn’t made it to the junction yet.”

“Yell at him that Nik says hurry. Yell it loud.”

“Holden! Nik says to hurry!” she yelled. “My Pappa is here now.”

“Can you let him go past you?”

“No, but I can wiggle past him.”

“Do that and tell him to go ahead.”

The girl relayed the message to her father.

“The air is getting stronger,” she told Nik.

“Yell at Holden again. Tell him to hurry,” Nik instructed her voice rising.

“I see him! I’m going to go help.”

“No! Stay where you are. Just tell me what’s going on, kay?”

Another voice came over the link, “what’s going on?” Naomi asked.

“I don’t have time,” Nik shut off the link. “Amos? Is the rope still in the duct?”

“Yeah.”

“Start pulling it out. Slowly at first until you feel someone on it.” Back to the girl, “the rope is going to start moving. You and your papa stay off it, kay.”

“Kay. Pappa is climbing out of the vent.”

“Good. Can you still see Holden?”

“Ya, but he is going slow with Wali.”

“Yell at him to grab the rope and hang on tight.”

She listened as the girl relayed her instruction.

“He’s got it!”

“Get out of there now!” Nik switched to Amos, “Pull, pull hard and fast. Get the others to help!”

“Alarms are going off,” Amos grunted.

Nik looked down at her console. The corridor area was flashing orange.

“Pull, Amos! Get him out of there!”

The comms went quiet as she waited for news. A hand on her shoulder made her nearly jump out of her skin. Naomi was floating beside her chair watching her console intently. The area changed to a flashing red, then a steady red.

“The containment gate is closed now,” she told Naomi.

“He got out,” the other woman said with confidence.

They waited in silence for several long minutes before Amos’ voice came over the link.

“We got them!”

Despite her assertion, Naomi was clearly relieved. She patted Nik on the shoulder, “good job Sésata.”

Nik only had time to nod at her before Holden came back over the link, “quick thinking, Nik. I owe you a drink.”

In a few minutes, the family was on their way to the shuttle with the pilot from the first rescue and the two men were ready to move on to the next beacon.


	16. Chapter 16

Holden and Amos had to suit up for their next rescue. The group they were going after was trapped in a cargo hauler in the ruptured construction dome. The hauler had been pinned under the transport ship during the explosion and its thrusters damaged. It was still sealed from the vacuum, but had a limited supply of air, and time was running out. Nik would have to guide the two men to a locker stocked with enough suits for the six trapped people, then find the safest route to their location.

Once they had the suits loaded on their trolley, Nik directed them through the station to the construction dome at the closest clear access point to the hauler. Once inside the dome, it was up to them to find their way through the wreckage.

“Oh my God,” Holden breathed. “This is the stuff of nightmares.”

“What do you see?” she asked.

“You don’t want to know,” Amos answered.

But Nik could imagine the twisted metal and damaged equipment and ships filling the space, and floating among them, like gruesome dolls, the dead bodies of those not lucky enough to have spacesuits or escape to safety. If not for Amos, one of those bodies would have been hers.

Swallowing the bile that rose at the thought, she told them softly, “I’m sorry guys, it’s all on you from here.”

“We’ll let you know when we need you again, Kitten,” Amos replied.

“Don’t call me that,” she told him weakly.

Then there was silence from them and all she could do was wait once more. To occupy herself, she switched her console and link over to Alex and Naomi to watch and listen to their rescue efforts. Over the last couple hours, while she had been engaged with Holden and Amos, they had been involved in rescue maneuvers of their own. On more than one occasion, she had been thankful she was strapped in as the forces on the Roci shifted with every change in direction of thrust. Naomi had been right, the nausea she had felt at first was fading somewhat, but it was still disorienting.

“Ba Le, this is the Rocinante. We are approaching from your starboard side, prepare for grappling hooks,” Alex’s drawl was almost soothing.

“Roger that, Rocinante. We are ready for you to proceed.”

The operation went smoothly, and soon the crew from the crippled Ba Le was on board the Roci. Combined with people rescued from the station, the ship was beginning to feel crowded.

An emergency transmission from the Mittermeier, an older ice hauler, came over the commlink.

“…reactor containment…”

“…critical…”

“…all ships….”

“Mittermeier, this is the Rocinante. Repeat your transmission,” Alex was the first to answer.

“Rocinante, our reactor containment is failing…~Static~…We cannot repair…. ~static~…. preparing to eject…. ~static~…”

“Shit, there are at least four ships within range if that core goes critical,” Naomi told Alex.

“All ships in the vicinity of the Mettermeier evacuate the area now!” Alex broadcast on all channels. “I repeat, all ships in the vicinity of the Mittermeier evacuate the area now. They are experiencing a reactor containment breach.”

Nik was quick to realize the danger and opened her link to Holden and Amos, “Get out of there now!”

“What’s going on?” Holden asked.

“There’s a ship outside the dome about to jettison its reactor core. If it explodes…,”

“We’re in a world of shit,” Amos finished.

“Where’s the nearest egress point?”

Nik was ready with the answer, “what is the closest section number on the inner bulkhead to you?”

“Seventy-four.”

“Good, there’s a maintenance hatch five meters above it. Get moving.”

“We got six people with us. How much time do we have?”

“Hos, you don’t have much time. Maybe five minutes, tops,” Alex answered. He had been listening on the link.

“Let us know when it goes.”

“Gotcha.”

“Okay, Nik, we’re at the hatch. What now?”

“Just get everyone inside and I will figure it out,” she told him. There were three ways to go once they were inside, but none of them were good. One led further into the area of the station damaged by the explosion, another led further into the station, and the third lead away from the shuttle. She was pulling up layout after layout to plot a route back to the shuttle that was safe.

“You better hurry it up,” Holden told her.

It didn’t take long to get everyone in the maintenance tunnel and moving away from the danger.

“What do you have, Nik?” Holden asked.

“You’re not going to like it,” she answered, biting her lip.

“I don’t like any of this shit, but here I am. Give it to me.”

“The best way back to the shuttle is through the worse of the damage,” she held her breath waiting for his reply.

“Tell me where to go,” was the only response she got.

Breathing a sigh of relief, she started, “continue down this tunnel until you reach a T.”

Once they reached the T, she directed them to take the right tunnel.

After a moment, Holden came over the commlink, “There’s an I-beam blocking the way, but I think we can move it enough to get around it.”

“Ya’ll need to hurry it up,” Alex urged. “The Mittermeier is about to jettison their core.”

Holden didn’t bother to cut the link as he and Amos fought to move the beam.

“I think we got it moved enough to squeeze by, but it will be tight.”

“Go!” Alex ordered. “They just…,” he was cut off by a bright flash of light near the construction dome.

“Oh, shit,” Nik whispered. “They’re not far enough away yet.”

Over the link, those on the Roci could hear the yelling and screaming of the people in the maintenance tunnel competing with the roar of air being sucked out of the tunnel and the grinding of tortured metal. Then the link went silent.

“Jim!” Naomi called out over the link. “Jim, are you alright?”

Nothing but silence came over the link.

Then, breathing.

And hissing.

“Jim!”

Tears filled Nik’s eyes. They may have been Inners, but they had died trying to save her people. They didn’t deserve this. She blinked and one of the droplets from her eye floated into the air in front of her face.

“Roci, do you copy?” Amos’ voice broke the smothering silence.

“Amos! Are you guys okay?” Naomi asked before Nik could respond.

“A little battered, but we’re mostly okay.”

Nik pressed a hand to her mouth to smother the sob that escaped.

“What do you mean?” Naomi responded.

“Capt’s commlink was damaged, we’re cut off from the rest of the group, and all our equipment just go sucked out into space,” he listed their status like reading a grocery list. “Other than that, we’re okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, my suit was punctured, but we got it patched back up before I lost too much air.”

“How much do you have left, Amos?” Naomi demanded.

“About 40 minutes. So, Kitten, you want to tell me how to get the hell out of here?”

Nik ignored the nickname, “can you get back to the dome?”

“No, that way is blocked.”

“Where are you in relation to the T?”

“We just past it by about a meter.”

She smiled. That was good news. There was a shaft large enough for them to fit through right there. They might have to climb, and it would take them further away from the shuttle, but she knew where the closest locker was that might contain a suit to replace Amos’ damaged one.

“In the left tunnel,” Amos clarified, and Nik’s smile died.

She was going to have to take them deeper into the station. The nearest locker was almost halfway to the inner shaft.

“And the tunnel’s collapsed about five meters away from where we are.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“Oh, come on, Kitten, it can’t be that bad.”

Oh, but it was. She took a deep breath, “about two meters from the T, there’s a shaft going straight up. Can you get to it?”

She waited impatiently for him to respond, but she already knew what he was going to tell her.

“Yeah, I can get to it, but there’s no way me or the Capt’n can go up it.”

She hung her head. Once again, there was a gentle touch on her shoulder.

“You can do this,” Naomi told her softly.

“Give me a minute to think, Amos,” and cut the link.

Looking up at Naomi, “There’s no other way out of there. If they had any of their tools, they might could cut their way out, but,” she spread her hands helplessly. “The only person that can get through that tunnel is me.”

She stopped and considered what she just said. “Naomi, is there a suit onboard small enough for me?”

Naomi shook her free hand, “no. You would need a child’s size.”

The flicker of hope she had sputtered and threatened to go out. She chewed her lip furiously while she racked her brain for something, anything. An idea came to her.

“But you have a printer that can produce one!”

“Just the suit, Nik, and nothing else, like the life support and commlink.”

“It wouldn’t have to. We can take that from another suit and rig it up.” She reached for the strap that held her in place and opened the commlink.

“Amos, I have a plan. Just sit tight and don’t use up all your air,” she said excitedly.

“Alright, Kitten, I knew you’d come up with something.”

“Don’t call me that.”

Amos just chuckled in response.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! I decided to give you, gentle readers a twofer this week. Enjoy!

Fifteen minutes later, Nik was suited up with a newly printed spacesuit. Strapped to her body using tape and zip-ties were the life support and comm systems scavenged from another suit. In a bag attached to her belt were three extra suits: one for each of the men and one for her in case of an emergency. Also strapped to her belt was a cutting torch. They would have to use it to get Holden and Amos out of the maintenance tunnel.

Being raised on a space station, she should have been trained in the use of the suit, but as a station rat, she had never been given the chance, so Naomi quickly ran through everything. It didn’t take long; the suits were almost idiot proof.

While they were putting her suit together, they had called the shuttle back to the ship. Naomi was taking over pilot duty and would be taking her back to the station. She had plotted out the best path to reach the two men and the closest access point was, of course, in the jumbled mess filling the construction dome.

Together they had filled in the guys about their plan. After arguing for several minutes with Amos acting as an intermediary, Naomi had overridden Holden’s objections.

“If Nik doesn’t do this, Amos will die before we can enact any other rescue attempt. Do you want that on your head? Besides, if anyone can survive over there, it’s Nik. Have some faith in her.”

On the shuttle, Nik strapped herself into a jump seat in the back. She didn’t want to see anything during their approach. She had told Naomi where to take her and she trusted the other woman to get her there. There was nothing else Nik could do except distract her. The trip was rough, and she felt like she would throw up on several occasions, luckily there was a barf bag handy when she did lose the battle. Over the sounds of her heaving, she could hear Naomi’s laugh.

“We’re almost there. Hold on a bit longer.”

Soon, the shuttle came to a rough stop and Naomi floated back to her, “this is it, Nik. Are you sure you want to do this?”

She was already unstrapping herself, “I have to do this. There’s nobody else.”

Naomi grabbed her arm, “no, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. Nobody will fault you for if.”

She shook off the hand, “I will.”

Naomi gave her a sad smile, “then let’s get you going.”

Nik had never processed through an airlock before. It was a different experience, exhilarating and frightening all at once to know that only the thin layer of polymer stood between her and the void of space. Her suit beeped at her to notify her of her accelerated heartrate. She acknowledged the alert and took deep steadying breaths.

“Here goes nothing,” she muttered as she pushed herself out of the shuttle.

She misjudged how much force to use and slammed into the wall, bouncing and flying off at an angle. She frantically tried to slow herself down by comically flapping her arms like an idiot. All she succeeded in was making herself spin alarmingly.

“Nik use your suit’s thrusters,” Naomi called out over the commlink.

Nik had forgotten about the thrusters in her panic. It took her three tries to get the thrust and angle right, but soon she was back at the wall and making her way to a panel several meters above the shuttle. Reaching the panel, she fumbled for a bit, not used to the thick gloves, before she could pull a tool from her belt.

“Shit, everything is ten times more difficult in this thing,” she told Naomi.

She could hear the smile in Naomi’s voice, “that is something you will get used to.”

Before Nik could formulate a reply, the panel popped open and floated away. “Kay, here we go,” she told Naomi before she climbed into the small space and squeezed through to the tunnel behind it. “I’m in.”

Amos came over the link, “no pressure, Kitten, but I’m down to twenty-five minutes.”

“I’m on my way and quit calling me that!”

****

The first two-thirds of her route wasn’t bad, but she was moving slower than expected because of the weight she carried. Granted the rotational gravity being generated by the stations new, erratic spin was considerably less that she was used to, but she was in a bulky spacesuit that she was unaccustomed to wearing. The bag and cutting torch kept catching on cables and corners. Nik was breathing hard and sweating despite the chill seeping through the material of the suit by the time she reached the shaft. She was frustrated and stressed to the point of tears.

Checking the time, she saw that it had taken her nearly twelve minutes to get that far. She opened a link to just Naomi.

“I don’t think I’m going to make it on time,” her voice quavered.

“Don’t think that way. You are Belta, Sésata. You got this,” Naomi replied in a firm voice.

“I got this,” Nik repeated to herself.

“Go get them, Sésata.”

Nik unclipped the bag and torch and quickly repositioned them so that she could still carry them easily, but they wouldn’t hamper her movement anymore. Then she considered the shaft. Feet first or headfirst? With the current gravity on the station, headfirst was the best option. She could drop the torch and bag down first and, if they didn’t make it all the way to the guys below, she at least would have her hands free. If they fell straight through, all the better.

“Amos, I’m going to drop the suits down the shaft ahead of me. They might go straight through to you down there, so stand away from the shaft.”

“Cross your fingers that we get that lucky,” he answered.

“What?” she asked, confused by the odd saying.

“Never mind, Kitten. Just drop them. We’re clear.”

Ignoring him, she dropped the bag down the shaft, though calling it a shaft was a stretch. It was more of a cable conduit; scarcely wider than she was, with thick cables running down the sides. The opening between them was tight enough that Nik wouldn’t fall when she climbed in headfirst. She held her breath as the bag disappeared from view.

“Did you drop it?” Amos asked.

She sighed, “ya. You should have seen it by now. Take a look.”

After a short pause, he answered, “I see it but it’s out of my reach, about three meters up.”

“Kay, I’m going to drop the torch and see if it dislodges the bag. Step back.”

She let the torch fall down the shaft, then slid into the shaft headfirst after it.

“Did that do anything?”

“Nope, it didn’t budge.”

“I’m on my way down,” she grunted, pulling herself down hand over hand between the cables.

The shaft was only twenty meters. If everything went smoothly, she should be through in plenty of time before Amos ran out of air. It was tight, pressing in on her from all sides, but she had been going into tight places like this for as long as she could remember. Instead of being claustrophobic, it was comforting in a way. Almost like being held in a tight embrace.

Her belt kept snagging on the straps used to support the cables, slowing her progress. Soon, she unbuckled her belt in frustration and left it hanging from the last strap it was caught on.

About halfway down, Nik found the cutting torch wedged across the shaft. The tip was shoved between two cables and trapped by the straps. Nik tried tugging on it but succeeded only in pulling herself closer to it. Shoving one of her feet between cables for leverage, she pushed on it experimentally, but stopped immediately when the action lodged it further. Bracing herself, she twisted it, moving it slightly.

Stopping, she took stock of her options. Time was ticking away for Amos below. There was no way to free the torch on time and there was no way for her to slip around it. She simply needed more space.

“I’m an idiot,” she muttered.

Reaching under the tool, she found the switch that powered it up, waited for it to cycle through its start-up sequence, then triggered the plasma. A weak blue spark burst from the tip between the cables, then grew brighter as she increased the setting. The light grew bright enough that Nik had to close her eyes against it and look away.

“What are you doing up there?”

“Trying to save your ass. Just hang in there.” she said between her gritted teeth as she tried to wiggle the torch back and forth.

The insulation on the cables began to blister, then smoke as the tip of the torch heated them. She yanked on the torch harder.

“Come on, you bastard.”

The torch came free suddenly, twisting in her grasp and nearly touching her suit before she got it back under control and powered off.

“Amos, how’re you doing down there?”

No answer came back over the link.

“Shit. Shit!”

As quickly as she could, Nik pushed the torch in front of her and pulled herself downwards. The bag with the suits was just a few more meters down and its closure was hung on one of the damn cable straps. Ripping it free, she pushed it with the torch and watched as it dropped from view. Pulling herself the rest of the way, she reached the opening and dropped the torch through before crawling out and dropping into the maintenance tunnel.

Holden was pulling a suit out of the bag and disconnecting its air hose. Amos was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the wall.

“Amos!” she called out to him over the commlink, but he was still and didn’t answer.

She watched helplessly while Holden knelt by his side, disconnected his suit’s hose and connected the new hose. Nik knew she was imagining it, but she could almost hear the hiss of air as it filled Amos’ suit. Holden shook the man after a few seconds.

At first, Amos didn’t respond, then he reached up and grabbed his captain’s hands, stopping his shaking.

“All right, I’m awake. You can quit now.”

Nik smiled broadly, “he can’t hear you.”

Holden had already stopped shaking him and put the face piece of his suit against Amos’. That was the only way to communicate verbally between suits when the comms were down. Stupid Inners, Nik thought, they never bothered to use the hand signals that Belters used regularly. She can’t believe Naomi hadn’t taught them yet. Maybe they were too proud to learn.

After a moment, Holden stood up and reached for the bag with the suits. While Amos struggled to his feet, he stripped the commlink off one of the spare suits and connected it to his. Nik busied herself locating the place on the wall where they needed to cut through with the torch. It gave her a reason to turn her back to them while she recomposed herself. She was damned if she was going to get emotional about an Inner that she didn’t even like almost dying because she wasn’t fast or strong enough.

“Hey, Kitten,” Amos broke into her thoughts as if he could hear them, “you did good. I owe you.”

“No, you don’t,” she answered without looking at him. “I owed you for getting me off the station in one piece. This was me just balancing the books.”

He snorted, “okay, whatever you say. But I won’t forget what you did.”

“Why don’t you save it until we actually get out of here alive?”

“About that,” he grabbed her by the arm making her turn towards him. He had the torch ready. “Where do I start cutting?”

She stepped back and indicated the place on the wall, “There, behind those cables."


	18. Chapter 18

Once out of the blocked maintenance tunnel, Nik lead the two men through the station, back to the shuttle. Again, they had to double back and take detours to get around the damage caused by the explosions. After their path was blocked for the third time, Nik paused to think about possible routes. This high in the station there was only one option left; the one path she didn’t want to take.

“What’s wrong?” Holden asked seeing her frown. They were back within the containment zone and had their visors up.

“All the ways out of this area are blocked except one.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Amos asked.

“It’s a climb straight down an abandoned elevator shaft for almost the entire length of the station.”

“You’re not afraid of a climb like that,” he replied, “not after that stunt you pulled with that boy above the docking bay.”

“So, you saw that?”

“Hell, Kitten, everybody in the docks saw you hanging upside down by your toes up there.”

“Humph,” she snorted, then answered his question, “the shaft has been depressurized, so we’ll be suited up for the climb. And I can’t guarantee it won’t be blocked either.”

“Is there any other option?” Holden frowned.

“Na, none that I can think of.”

“Then lead the way.”

They had passed the containment barrier that led to an access panel to the shaft twice while she was trying to find an alternate way out, so the route back to it was clear. Reaching it, Nik popped the cover off the control panel, pulled three wires, and rerouted two of them.

Looking over her shoulder at the others, she told them, “you’ll want to put your visors on now and hold on to something.”

Snapping her own visor into place, she turned back to panel and connect the last wire to its new termination. The barrier’s light flashed a warning then slid open. The decompression of their area was immediate and violent. Nik almost lost her grip on the control panel as the air around them was sucked out through the opening.

Once their area was depressurized, they were able to let go and continue forward. Just a few meters past the barrier was an access panel to the shaft. Nik pulled it off and set it aside.

“There’s no way Amos and I can fit through that,” Holden said over the comm link.

“Good thing we still have that torch, ya?” she said stepping aside for Amos.

It didn’t take him long to cut through the wall and enlarge the hole. Taking care not to snag her suit on the newly cut edges, Nik leaned into the opening and looked up and down. It seemed clear, but it was hard to tell since there were no lights.

“You got a chem light?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Amos answered and handed one to her.

She snapped it to bring it to life and dropped it down the shaft. The light fell at a slight angle to the shaft, indicating the new axis of rotation for the station and bounced of the wall several levels down, but it didn’t stop falling. Once she was satisfied the way was clear at least as far as they needed to go, she pulled herself into the shaft, wincing at the discomfort it caused her injured shoulder. She was going to pay for this later, she was sure.

Lowering herself until she was clear of the opening, she called back to the others, “I’m clear. Your turn.”

Holden crawled awkwardly in first and moved out of the way. Despite making the opening bigger, Amos still came close to not being able to squeeze through. Nik giggled at his struggle to free himself.

“You need to lose weight, Inner, you’re too fat!”

His annoyed grunt was the only answer she got.

The three of them were finally in the shaft and Nik started down. It was tricky, finding foot holds among the cables and pipes that lined the wall of the shaft, so her weight was borne mostly by her arms and hands. After a few levels, tears leaked from her eyes at the pain in her shoulder, but she didn’t stop or complain. This was the only way out.

For long minutes they climbed in silence. Nik’s bad hand was weakening and slipped off the cable she was holding a couple of times. Since she was below them, neither Holden nor Amos noticed her struggle. The third time it slipped, her other hand was in mid reach. She dropped almost a meter before she was able to find a purchase and stop her fall. She clung to the pipe she had grabbed and panted.

“You okay?” Amos asked.

She tried to raise her bad arm to nod with her fist, but it hurt too bad.

“Hold on, I’m coming down to you.”

Gritting her teeth, she keyed her comm link, “I’m okay. Just hit a slick spot, is all.”

“Bullshit,” he replied. “I forgot about that shoulder. Hold on, I’ll come get you.”

“No!” she snapped. She didn’t need him saving her again. “No, I’m okay. We’re halfway there already, let’s go.”

With that, she sucked in a breath and started back down trying to find foot holds more often to take her weight.

She had stretched her estimate a bit; they weren’t quite halfway, but she didn’t want him to know that.

After a while, Holden came over the comm link, “I thought we were halfway back there.”

“Inners always so impatient,” she muttered not caring if they heard. “Look down. See those cables across the shaft? That’s our stop.”

“Good to hear.”

What she didn’t tell them was that they were on the wrong side of the shaft. They needed to get to the other side and the only way to get across was on those cables. The ones she hated crossing when she was healthy and strong. Now, she was hurt and tired.   
To make matters worse, her suit just flashed a warning at her. She was getting close to the limit of her air. Before long, her readout would be in the orange.

For a few more minutes, the only sound she heard was her own breath and heartbeat as she climbed towards the cables. Once there, she leveraged herself into the tunnel the cables came out of and tried to catch her breath while she waited on them.

When both men were in the tunnel, Holden started down it.

“No, not that way,” she stopped him.

“What?” he stopped. “I thought you said this were we were going.”

“No,” she said slowly, “it’s where we stop climbing.” She pointed with her good hand, “that’s where we’re going.”

The shaft was a little under three meters across. Amos crawled to the opening and looked out.

“We’re crossing on those cables?”

“Unless you can fly, Inner.”

Another grunt was her answer.

Reaching up, he grabbed one of the thicker cables with both hands and put his weight on it to test it. It flexed some, but not enough to be alarming, so he hung his legs over the edge of the tunnel and slowly lowered himself until he was suspended by just his hands around the cable. Hand over hand, he made his way across the shaft with almost the same ease as Lucky or Hopper had. On the other side he pulled himself up into the tunnel and turned back to her and Holden.

“No problem, come on, Kitten.”

“Quit calling me that, asshole,” she murmured.

“What was that? I didn’t catch it.”

“Holden,” she said, ignoring him, “you’re next.”

He looked like he was going to argue, and she raised a hand, “I need more time for my shoulder to recover, so just go. Now.” She even gave him a little push towards the opening.

“Okay, quit pushing me,” he swatted at her hand. “I’m going.”

He sounded so much like one of the boys that she grinned in her helmet. For an Inner, he wasn’t half bad. Too bad Amos was such a pain in the ass. She might could like them if it wasn’t for him.

Holden wasn’t as graceful as Amos had been. He chose to wrap his arms and legs around the entire cable bundle and pull himself across upside-down. Soon it was Nik’s turn. She had been contemplating how to get across while the others crossed. She remembered a game she used to play when she was younger. It would be risky, but it was the only way across with her shoulder hurting like it was.

Crawling to the opening she pulled herself up using one arm and stood on the lip. Bracing herself, she stepped up on the cable bundle with one foot, then the other and leaned back against the cables and pipes behind her until she had her balance. The bundle was thick, about as big around as Amos’ arm, but from where she stood, it looked impossibly narrow.

“You have to be kidding me,” Amos said. “Just stay there and I’ll come back across to get you.”

“No, I got this. I do this all the time,” she lied. It had been years.

Amos reached out to grab the bundle.

“Stop, or you’re going to make me lose my balance,” she snapped. Taking a deep breath, she held her arms out to the side for balance and started across before she lost her nerve. The skill came back to her easily as she placed one foot carefully in front of the other with a minimum of wobble.

Amos didn’t retreat into the tunnel, he stayed where he was and watched her intently as she crossed. She tried not to look at him, but her eyes kept flickering towards him of their own accord. Halfway across, one of her feet slipped and she struggled to regain her balance, flailing wildly. Getting her foot back on the bundle, she took a moment to calm her racing heart before continuing.

Reaching the other side, she straddled the bundle and allowed herself a moment of triumph before swinging off and crawling into the tunnel with the men.

“You do have a death wish, Kitten,” Amos told her with a shake of his head.

She almost told him not to call her that again, but realized it was probably futile, so she chose to ignore him and started down the tunnel.


	19. Chapter 19

From there, it was a straight shot through to the shuttle. Good thing, too, Nik thought. Her oxygen level was in the orange now. She had less than fifteen minutes of air left. They could take a detour and take care of the problem, but she was tired, hurt, and hungry; she just wanted to get back to the Roci, strap in and take a long nap to let her body recover from what she put it through in the past few hours. It was all she could do to put one foot in front of another at this point.

Caught up in her thoughts of a nap, she didn’t see Holden and Amos stop until she almost bumped into them. Looking around them, she saw what had caused them to stop and groaned aloud.

The door to the docks was collapsed in upon itself and through the narrow opening that remained a pile of twisted metal was visible.

“Uh, Roci, can you get the shuttle on comms?” Holden asked.

“That’s a big negative, Hoss. I was about to radio you with the info,” Alex replied. “Can you see it?”

“Hold on a minute, Alex, we’re at the docks now. I’ll let you know what we find out.”

“Roger that. Be careful, there have been some accidents over the last couple hours. Pilots not being careful, getting too close.”

“Good to know. Stand by.”

Holden turned to Amos, “can you get through there?”

Nik didn’t wait for him to reply. There was no way he was going to squeeze through the gap. It was questionable if she could even make it. Ducking around the two men, she picked her way through the rubble scattered in front of the door.

“Hey!” Holden called to her over the comm link.

“Give me a minute. I’m just gonna take a look,” she assured him.

“When we’re back on the Roci, we’re going to have a conversation about who’s the captain.”

“I’m not one of your crew, Holden.”

Holden didn’t bother to answer, and Nik was at the door. The opening was wider than it looked. Even Amos might could fit through it. Easing through the opening until her head was free, she looked at the wreckage in front of her. At first, it looked like a bomb had detonated in here also, but there wasn’t shredded debris scattered around.

“What do you see?” Holden asked.

“It looks like someone tried to pilot one of the ships out of here and lost control,” she answered.

“Can we get through?”

“It wouldn’t do any good,” she said wearily.

“Why not?”

She pushed herself back through the opening and started back towards the two men.

“Because there’s no way for the shuttle to get in there.”

There was a pause as her statement sank in. Then, “Okay, where’s the next place we can dock the shuttle?”

“Already on it,” Alex told her.

Just then, Nik’s air monitor turned red and beeped a warning.

“Um, we need to figure something out fast,” she told her companions.

“Why?” Amos asked.

“My oxygen is in the red. I’ve got less than five minutes left.”

Amos strode over and grabbed her good arm that had the monitor on it, holding it up to read it.

“When were you going to tell us?” he asked sharply.

“It wouldn’t have mattered if this hadn’t happened,” she said as she jerked her arm away.

“Where’s the nearest locker with suits?”

She pointed, “out there.”

“Shit. You need to find some place close or Nik’s going to run out of air,” he said over the comm link for all to hear.

“No can do, partner,” Alex replied. “Everything in that area is a wreck. The entrance is blocked with three different ships. If the hole in the dome was bigger, I could fly us in to get you, but right now there’s nothing close. Better get moving before you lose that little hellcat.”

“Hold on,” Naomi overrode him. “Jim, can you get into the docks at all from where you’re at?”

“Not through this door, no. Only Nik is small enough to squeeze through it.”

“Wait,” she stopped him. “It is big enough for you both to get through. It just doesn’t look it from back here.”

“Good,” Naomi said. “You guys get in there and head for the entrance. We can’t fly the Roci in to get to you, but you can fly out to the Roci. We’ll catch you.”

“That’s crazy,” Holden told her.

“What’s crazy is letting Nik suffocate while you argue about it.”

Holden turned to her, “are you sure there’s no other place to get you more air?”

“None that I can guarantee. I think she’s right; this is the best bet.”

Her monitor sounded an alarm and it suddenly became hard to breath. She felt a jerk, heard a snap, then a whoosh of air and could draw a breath. Looking up, she saw Amos standing over her with his airline connected to her suit’s auxiliary connection.

“She’s right, Cap. She won’t make if much longer.”

“Well, shit. I guess we’re going for a walk outside,” Holden sighed. “Alex, get as close as you safely can. Naomi, get to the airlock and be ready to open it for us.”

Amos knelt in front of Nik, his head only a little lower than hers, “you need to stay close to me, okay. Whenever your monitor alarms, I’ll juice you up again. Got it?”

He unhooked her from his air and reconnected it to his suit. “We need to go now, Cap.”

A few minutes later, the three were picking their way through the destroyed docks as fast as they could. They were forced to climb over downed support structures, crushed cargo pods and go around the wrecked ships and heavy equipment. They weren’t making good time and Amos had to refresh Nik’s air supply three times before they were halfway to their destination.

Nik’s suit beeped its alarm and they stopped again for Amos to hook up to her suit. As he stepped up to her, there was a flash of light to her right and the grating under their feet shifted as a secondary explosion sent a shockwave through the station. Holden, standing a few meters away went down on his knees as a section of stairs broke free and swung wildly towards them passing harmlessly over his head. Amos had his back to Holden and didn’t see the danger. At Holden’s shout over the comm link, he started to turn around.

Acting quickly, Nik shoved him sideways, away from her, then unlocked her mag-boots and pushed off from the grating straight up. If they had been out in the void, it would have been easy to just push off and let her forward momentum and suit thrusters do the work. But they were still inside the station and it was still spinning, albeit more slowly, and creating rotational gravity. Luckily, the slower spin also meant less force and she was able to jump higher than she normally would have been able to. However, the time she took to push Amos out of harm’s way slowed her down just a fraction and the stairs caught her mid-thigh as they flew by.

Tumbling out of control, she couldn’t control her trajectory. Slamming into a large cargo loader, she ricocheted away from it, still tumbling. Her suit’s alarm was a constant blare in her ears above her frantic breathing, and she was hitting smaller bits and pieces of debris as she sailed through the docks. Then she couldn’t draw a breath. She was out of air. Her vision began to fade as her brain struggled without oxygen, but she caught a glimpse of the dock’s bay doors looming large before her before her rotation spun it out of her line of sight.

Something grabbed her leg and pulled on it. Out of instinct she kicked and struggled weakly against it, then Amos’ voice was in her ear over the comm link.

“Stop fighting! Be still!”

Another pair of hands grabbed her and held her still until she heard the whoosh of air in her suit. She took big gulping breaths of air as her vision cleared.

“There you go. Slow down. Take slow deep breaths. Atta girl,” Amos coached over the link.

Too soon, he was forced to disconnect so he could breathe also.

“Well, at least we’re here. And I can see the Roci,” Holden told them.

****

Just a few minutes later, the three stood in the airlock waiting for the pressure to stabilize. A light flashed green over the inner door, indicating it was safe to proceed and they took their helmets off and took a deep breath of the Roci’s air. Naomi opened the inner door and rushed in to wrap Holden in a hug.

Releasing him, she turned to Nik, “welcome back, sésata. You were great out there.”

Blushing, Nik smiled shyly, “it was noting, any belta would have done the same.”

“Not for Inners, they wouldn’t.”

“Na, probably not,” Nik agreed. “I’m gonna end up regretting it, I’m sure.”

“Probably,” Naomi smiled. “Let’s get you out of that suit. You look like you could use some sleep.”

“Ya, that’s sounds good.”

Naomi and Holden filed out the door and Nik started to follow, only to be jerked back and pushed up against the bulkhead of the air lock. Amos stared down at her with a frown.

“Don’t ever do that again.”

“I’m sorry I panicked,” she apologized. “I couldn’t help it.”

“Not that,” he shook his head impatiently then leaned down until the tip of his nose almost touched hers. “Don’t ever risk your life for me. Do you hear me. Ever!” He shook her a bit at the last word and shoved away from her, turning towards the door.

“Why?” she asked his back. When he didn’t answer, she repeated the question louder, “Why not?”

She barely heard his answer before he left the airlock.

“Because I’m not worth it.”


	20. Chapter 20

“What the hell are you doing?”

Nik looked up from the dismantled coffee maker in front of her to an outraged Holden standing in the doorway of the galley. Since the ship was on the float, she couldn’t spread the parts out on the deck, instead she had to keep them in a bag until she was ready to use them. It made the process more challenging, but she was getting used to it now that she was almost done.

“Fixing the coffee maker for you,” she told him and went back to reassembling the machine.

Her first forty-eight hours onboard the Roci had been a flurry of activity. Even though Holden and his crew didn’t go back to the station, she had stayed busy guiding various search parties through the labyrinth of passages, tunnels, and shafts. The Roci and its crew had turned their attention to the rescue of disabled ships in the area around the station.

But now, all of those that could still be rescued alive were off the station and the search and rescue flotilla was breaking up, each ship heading for its own destination. Holden was only holding the Roci here to keep the peace until everyone was gone. Different salvage crews had been dispatched to continue the decommissioning of the now dead station and were just a few days out.

Also on board the Roci were five Belters and a Martian security guard. The Belters had helped with the rescue and repairs of some of the ships, but the Martian had kept to himself in his quarters. Holden was going to transfer him to one of the new salvage ships once they arrived.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked, stepping into the room to loom over her.

Nik didn’t bother craning her neck to look up at him; the movement would have exacerbated the dull throb of a headache that had started the day before. So far it was just a nuisance and she didn’t want to do anything to make it worse.

“I wouldn’t have taken it apart if I didn’t.”

Holden squatted beside her to watch as she snapped pieces back into place, occasionally looking at the diagram on her handheld.

“The syphon hub was broke in two. Lucky for you, the printer you bought from me printed a new one once I downloaded the file for it.” She picked up the offending part and held it out to him.

He took it from her and held it up to his eyes, rolling it back and forth between his finger and thumb, “huh, we’ve had it fixed three times now and they missed this every time?”

“Seems so. It took me a bit to find it too, so don’t be too mad about it.” She picked up the newly printed part and snapped it into place.

“Are you this good with everything?”

“Na,” she frowned as she fitted the housing over the new part, taking care not to damage it. “Somethings are harder than others, but you can find a manual on just about everything, so you just gotta be willing to learn.”

She snapped the cover into place and tightened the screws holding it in place.

“There you go,” she smiled. “Good as new.”

Holden gave her a hand up from the floor and steadied her as she regained her orientation. Her head still swam whenever she changed positions quickly, and her headache sent a stab of pain through her head making her grimace.

“You okay?”

“Ya, just a headache.”

“How about I reinstall and test this machine out and you go lie down and get some rest?”

Normally, Nik would have argued with him, insisting that she make sure the machine functioned correctly after her repairs, but she was feeling tired and a nap sounded like a good idea.

“Kay, just don’t lose it if it don’t work.”

“I won’t,” he smiled. “I leave it for you to fix.”

Unlocking her mag-boots, Nik used the handholds to float through the ship to the room they had given her. She wasn’t nearly as graceful as Naomi, but it was less tiring than using the mag-boots to walk there.

Shutting the door behind her, she stripped out of the coveralls she had printed for herself and, grabbing a pillow and blanket from the bunk, she opened the doors of the wardrobe built into the wall. The space inside was small, but so was she and she was used to sleeping in tight quarters. The bunk was just too open, exposed, for her to be comfortable, so after that first night when exhaustion had overridden everything else, she had made a nest in the wardrobe and slept in there. It was small enough that she couldn’t float too far off the surface while she slept.

Wearing just her underwear, she crawled in and cocooned herself in the blanket before shutting the doors. She was asleep within minutes.

****

A pounding that was not her headache woke her up a few hours later. She opened her eyes to complete darkness was disoriented until she woke up enough to remember she wasn’t on the space station any longer. The only home she had ever known was gone and she was on the Rocinante with its crew, separated from her family.

There was movement outside of her sleeping nest, and she froze, listening at the crack where the two doors met.

“Hey, Cap, she’s not in her quarters. I’ll go check the maintenance bay.” Amos’ voice carried through to her.

Taking a breath, she pushed open the wardrobe doors and peered out at Amos’ back.

“What you want?” she asked as she unwound her body from its warm nest.

“What the fuck?” he asked spinning around to stare at her as she straightened up, holding onto the wardrobe.

She met his gaze, refusing to give in to her urge to crawl back into the wardrobe away from him and asked again, “what do you want?”

He held her eyes for a heartbeat before saying, “you have a message.” He nodded towards the monitor on the wall of the room, “you can access it from here.”

A rude comment was on the tip of her tongue, but she held it in check. This man had saved her on more than one occasion and hadn’t asked anything in return. Yet. She wasn’t quite ready to trust him, but maybe, just maybe she didn’t have to be afraid of him.

“Thank you,” she said instead.

He stood still for a moment longer, then spun on his heel and left the room. It seemed bigger, emptier without him. Nik shivered, then realized with a start that she was standing there in just her flimsy under garments. She laughed to herself as she grabbed her coveralls. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about him wanting THAT from her now in payment. Not unless he had a thing for scrawny women built like ten-year-old boys. That thought made her feel hollow inside, but she brushed it aside and got dressed.

****

“You won’t believe what they let me do, Nik!” Lucky’s excited face filled the screen.

“They let me use a cargo lifter and I got to move this super heavy cargo box. It picked it up like it didn’t weigh nothing!”

Nik smiled at his enthusiasm. He acted like he was having a great time on the Villanueva. He rambled on about some of the crew members for a bit before Maggie cut him off.

“Niki girl, somebody else wanna say hi to you,” she held Mouse up to the screen.

“Hi, Nik! It smells funny here, but the kibble is yummy, and Nana brought candy, so I get a piece every night. I miss you. I was saving some candy for you, but Nana says you’re kay with me eating it for you. Is it kay?”

Nik’s eyes teared up at the little girl’s message. It was just like Mouse to save some candy for her.

“Oyedeng, Nik! Love you!” She waved at the screen in response to Mouse’s wave, even though it wasn’t real time. There was a twenty minute delay between the two ships now. Jupiter was on the other side of Sol from Tycho’s position in the belt, so the Eva was burning away from them, taking her family farther and farther away.

Maggie set Mouse aside and looked into the screen, “don’t be mad, but it’s easier if they call me Nana. Not as many questions, eh?” She glanced to the side and smiled at someone out of range. “Lucky is really taking to life on the freighter. He’s a natural, that boy.”

She looked back at the screen, “I don’t have a lot of time, but I wanted to let you know that we’re all okay and we miss you. The botanists on board are going to help us find a place on Ganymede and they think they can get me a job in one of the new domes. Hopefully, by the time you get here, we will be settled and all you’ll have to do is worry about getting yourself a job. Take care of yourself, Niki girl and hurry up!”

The screen froze as the message ended. This was the fifth time Nik had played it back in the last two days. Her hand hovered over the keypad to start it over again, but she stopped herself. She was going to drive herself crazy if she didn’t find something to occupy her time. With the rescue work behind them, all the Roci could do was wait for the incoming demo crews. To her the ship was crowded and small, making her feel trapped. Her nagging headaches weren’t helping either.

Sighing, she pushed away from the monitor, propelling herself towards the wardrobe; maybe another nap would help pass the time.

A chime at her door stopped her and she twisted her body to turn around. She still didn’t have the hang of maneuvering gracefully in zero gravity and still acted instinctively as if there was gravity. Her spin caused her to awkwardly rotate on a diagonal axis and did little to change her direction.

“Shit.” She was barefoot and her mag-boots were on the unused bunk. All she could do was wait the couple seconds until she got close enough to a wall to push off.

The chime sounded a second time.

“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” she said loud enough to be heard through the door.

Her feet touched the wall first, and she pushed off towards the door a little harder than she had meant to and collided with the door.

“Umph!” she grunted.

“You okay in there?” Amos asked from the other side.

She rolled her eyes. Of course, it would be Amos that would witness her clumsiness.

She steadied herself against the door, quickly straightened up her coveralls, and smoothed her braid as best she could before she pushed the button to open the door.

“What?” she asked trying to act casual. There was no way she was going to let him know how much he unnerved her.

He took in her floating in the doorway and his bright eyes flicked to her mag-boots sitting on her bunk. Her cheeks and ears heated with embarrassment.

“You should keep your boots on unless you’re sleeping,” he said without any recrimination in his voice. Just stating a fact. Earth orbits the sun. The walls are gray. Nik is incompetent. Everything comes out in the same tone. Only when he was angry did it change. Sometimes not even then. She had watched him back down the Martian during mealtime yesterday with the exact same tone. Something in his eyes had warned the man not to fuck with him; advice the man had luckily taken. Nik never wanted to be on the receiving end of one of those looks.

“Did you need something, or are you just doing a ship-wide mag-boot check?”

Amos smiled and her flush deepened, not from embarrassment this time.

“Nah, I have some repairs to do and could use an extra set of hands. I thought you might want something to do.”

“Ya lik pahang! I mean,” she corrected, “I guess I have time to help you out.”

The corners of his mouth twitched, “If you have too much going on, I can get one of the others to help…,”

“Na,” she interrupted, “the ship is more important. I’ll go.”

“Put on your boots and meet me in the maintenance bay.”

****

In the maintenance bay, Amos was gathering tools and putting them in a bag. Nik paused in the doorway.

“What are we working on?” she asked.

He looked up from the bin he was digging through, “one of our maneuvering thrusters took some damage when that old shuttle came loose from the docking clamps and scrapped against the Roci.”

“Maneuvering thruster,” she mused. Then, “wait, that’s outside.”

“Yes.”

“We’re going outside the ship?”

“Yes,” he turned to look at her, “is that a problem?”

“Na,” she answered quickly. “It’s just that, well,” she paused, chewing her lip, trying to phrase her concern in a way that didn’t sound like a lame excuse, “ah, hell, Amos, you’ve seen me. I’m a mess in zero G, and you want me to go outside?”

He chuckled and shook his head, “everybody’s like that at the beginning. The only way you’re going to get better is practice. And you won’t be floating around out there. You’ll have your mag-boots on.”

He studied her for a moment, reading her body language, then said in a softer voice, “you don’t have to go if you don’t want to, but you’ll never get over your fear if you don’t.”

That got her.

“I’m not afraid, welwala,” she said indignantly, flushing yet again.

“My mistake,” he said with a straight face. “Can you grab that torch and bring it?”

She marched across the space as best she could with the boots and pulled the torch off the wall. Turning to face Amos, she shot him a challenging look.

“Anything else I can carry for you?”

He snorted and stood up straight, “no that’s it. Let’s go.”

****

Getting suited up was easier now that Nik had printed out two suits that fit her small frame and fitted them up with comms and air. Within minutes, they were ready to exit the Roci and her second spacewalk, although she didn’t remember much about her first one.

“When we get out there, keep your eyes down and focus on the ship while you’re walking. It’ll keep you from getting disoriented.”

She nodded her understanding with her fist.

The inner airlock door shut behind them and there was a brief whoosh of air. Amos paused by the outer door and looked over at her.

“You ready?”

She met his eyes, “ya.”

The outer door slid open and the void spread out beyond it. Nik stepped up to the threshold and took in the sight. It was everything she had ever heard. Beautiful. Awe inspiring. Scary as fuck.

She jumped when a hand waved in front of her face, “coming?”

She swatted it away, stepped out of the airlock, and followed Amos across the skin of the ship. Keeping his advice in mind, she kept her eyes locked on Amos’ feet in front of hers as they made their way across the fuselage to the damaged thruster. Once there, she fought her urge to look up, instead focusing on the equipment. The outer housing was crumpled and pushed into several of the more delicate vanes that controlled the thrust. Two vanes were missing, and three others were crushed beyond use.

Working together, they straightened the housing as much as possible and welded a sheet of material to it to hold it in place until it could be replaced. Nik pried out the damaged vanes while Amos prepared their replacements. Once they were pulled out, she could see that the bearing collar was also damaged, not allowing the bearing to rotate fully.

Pointing it out to Amos, she said, “I think I can print a temporary one for now. It won’t last for long, but it will do until we can replace it.”

“You okay to go back and do it while I finish these?”

“Ya.”

“Remember, don’t look up, okay.”

“Kay.”

Nik did exactly as instructed on the way back to the airlock. In the maintenance bay, she downloaded the right files to the printer from her handheld and waited impatiently as the machine hummed and clicked while printing out the bearing collar.

“Well, look what we have here,” a voice said from the doorway behind her.

She turned to face the Martian standing there smirking at her. His name was Lebron and had been watching her the last few days, the look in his eyes promising nothing good. Usually someone from the crew or one of the Belters was around, though, so she had ignored him.

“Where’s your watchdog, girlie?” he took a step inside the bay and looked around, verifying that she was alone.

“Amos is waiting on this part,” she told him warningly.

His smile showed too many teeth, “I know, but he’s outside, isn’t he?” He took another step towards her. The maintenance bay was more cluttered than it was the last time she was trapped inside, and he was between her and the door.

Don’t back down and don’t show fear, it was what he was expecting, she told herself, standing straight and facing him head on.

“I have work to do, so why don’t you go lurk somewhere else?”

The printer beeped behind her. The part was ready. Nik forced herself to turn her back to Lebron and opened the printing compartment to lift out the collar. It was small, but fairly heavy. She picked it up with her left hand while her right, hidden from his view   
by her body, reached for a wrench on her belt.

She heard him behind her and tensed, waiting for him to reach her. When his hand landed on her shoulder to push her forward against the printer, she spun under his arm and swung the wrench at him. He blocked it with a snarl and lunged toward her. That’s when she swung the collar will all her strength and it connected with his face making a satisfying thud. Blood and a tooth went flying.

“You little bitch!” he spat.

She didn’t let up. Kicking him in the side of the knee would have dropped him if they weren’t on the float. Instead he howled and spun away from her, bouncing off the printer. Nik didn’t hesitate, she darted for the door and to the airlock.

Once in the airlock, she took the time to slow her breathing before opening the outer door and making her way back to Amos.

“Here it is,” she held it out to him.

He took it from her and turned it over in his hands. That’s when she noticed the smear of blood on it. He looked up at her and she met his stare blandly, like nothing at all was wrong. Releasing her from his stare, he turned towards the thruster and went back to work. After a moment, Nik joined him and together they finished the repairs.

Gathering up their tools, they turned to go back to the airlock, but Amos stopped her before she could take a step.

“What?”

“Do you want to look?” he pointed up.

“Ya.”

“Spread your feet and hold onto my arm. If you start to feel dizzy or anything, just look down at your feet.”

Nik did what he told her, then looked up. She had looked out viewports on the station occasionally, but she wasn’t prepared for the expanse of space arched over her in every direction, the velvety backdrop of nothingness covered with countless points of lights. Looking to the right, she could see the heart of the galaxy spread across the vastness making everything else seem insignificant.

“So beautiful,” she whispered as she swayed forward towards the infinite.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Amos’ voice broke through her trance. “Look down!”

Nik regretfully tore her eyes away from the sight and looked down to reorient herself. She realized that she had let go of Amos’ arm and was leaning forward at almost a forty-five-degree angle to the surface of the Roci and one of arms outstretched as if to touch the stars. The only things keeping her from following that urge were her mag-boots and his arm looped around her waist, anchoring her to the ship.

“Now I know why you told me not to look,” she straightened up and looked over at him.

“Yeah, it has that effect on some people. Most just get dizzy, though. You good now?”

“Ya,” she nodded, “let’s go in.”

Back in the airlock, after they removed their helmets, Nik stopped him before he opened the inner door.

“Thank you, Amos. For letting me see that.”

He shrugged, “no problem.” Then he opened the door and walked out, leaving her alone.

Inners. She would never understand them. Especially that one.


	21. Chapter 21

The next day, as Nik made her way to the galley, she could hear yelling from inside. Turning the corner, she saw Naomi standing in the door watching whatever was going on inside. She heard Holden yelling at someone.

“…reckless. You put all of us in danger, damnit! Don’t you ever stop to think before you do shit like that?”

“What’s going on?” Nik stepped up to Naomi to look past her. The only person in the galley besides Holden was Amos. While the captain was pacing furiously and waving his arms around while he yelled, Amos sat calmly at the table just watching him. At her voice, both turned towards the door.

“You!” Holden pointed, walking towards the door. “Did you know about this?”

As he approached, Amos stood up.

“Sit the fuck down, Amos,” Holden ordered.

Naomi moved to block Nic completely, “Jim, you need to calm down.”

“Calm down?” He pointed to Amos, “he spaced someone on MY ship! Don’t tell me to calm down.”

“You’re going to scare her, yelling like that,” she told him in a reasonable voice.

“No, he’s not,” Nik pushed between the woman and the door frame to enter the room. She strode up to Holden and looked up at him, “you have something you want to ask me?”

“Did you know?”

“That he spaced someone? Why would I know? I just found out. In fact, with the way you’re yelling, the entire damn system just found out.”

He started to reply, but a soft “Jim” from Naomi stopped him and he spun away, running a hand through his already tousled hair.

“Will someone tell me what’s going on?” she asked.

Holden motioned towards Amos, who had sat back down when Holden turned away, “why don’t you ask him. Maybe you’ll get a better answer than me.”

Nik looked at Amos, who was still standing despite his captain’s order to sit, “what happened?”

He waited three breaths before answering.

“Lebron came after you yesterday, didn’t he?”

That was the last thing she expected to hear.

“Yes, but I took care of it, that’s why I didn’t say anything.”

“Lebron didn’t consider it taken care of.”

“Then I would have dealt with it, again,” she stepped up to him. “I’m not some helpless kid that needs to be looked after constantly. I’ve been taking care of myself for almost twenty years now without your interference. You need to quit trying to be my savior. I don’t need you!”

The last she yelled as she shoved hard on his chest, but she might as well have been shoving a bulkhead as he looked down at her with that slightly bemused expression she hated.

“Damnit! Nakangepensa!” she spat at him, then she spun and pushed past Naomi a second time. She didn’t stop until she reached her room and was curled up into a ball in her wardrobe. She didn’t know why the tears started but did nothing to stop them and cried herself into a fitful sleep.

****

Her headache was back with a vengeance. Laying completely still didn’t seem to help, either. Her shoulders and neck tensed up against the pain, making it worse. After forcing her muscles to relax for the fourth time, she gave up and pushed the wardrobe door open. Her eyes, used to the complete dark of her nest, blinked against the dim light in the room.

Leaving her room, she made her way to the galley, but the belters were all crammed in the small space talking and laughing as they ate. The thought of food made her stomach roll and the noise made her wince, so she continued past with a short wave in response to their greetings.

Alex was up in the bridge listening to vintage country-western music. That was a big nope. No way she was going to subject herself to that, even if she was curious about piloting the ship.

The maintenance shop was definitely a no-go, also. Amos was assuredly in there if he was anywhere on the ship other than his room and she had no desire or energy to get into it with him again.

During the last few days on the Roci, Nik had realized why he unnerved her so much. She couldn’t read him. At all. For someone whose survival over the last two decades had hinged on being able to read people - to tell if they were friend or foe, if they wanted something from her or not, if they intended harm or were benign - this was very disconcerting. Nothing in his mannerisms or his expression gave away his thoughts.

Damnit all! She had just started to, well, not really like him, but dislike him less maybe. He was quiet, undemanding, and easy to be around when he wasn’t staring at her like a puzzle to be figured out. And he had saved her at least twice, she grudgingly admitted. Even without being able to read him like the others, she couldn’t find any reason to continue to distrust him. Then he had to go and do something stupid.

Without thinking she found herself outside the cargo bay. Looking through the thick poly-glass window in the door, she could see that it was dimly lit, so there probably wasn’t anyone in there working. The door opened with a soft whoosh and she floated in. Not only was it dark, but it was also cooler than the rest of the ship. And quiet. With just the hum of the ship’s ventilation system, she could hear her own breathing. Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to drift and relax.

You would think that being in zero gravity, you could just float motionlessly in midair, but you’d be wrong. Newton’s third law was amplified when gravity and friction were taken out of the equation. Every breath taken pulled in air, pulling, while your chest expanded, pushing away; not quite cancelling each other out. Breathing out was like using a thruster, pushing you away from the direction of the exhalation. Even factoring out the act of breathing, your body is never really completely still. There are micro movements happening all the time that you aren’t even aware of. Muscles making tiny adjustments to maintain balance and position.

If Nik had ever floated in a pool or any body of water, she most likely would have compared floating in space to that. In order to maintain a neutral position, she had to constantly make small movements with her hands and feet. Still it was relaxing, she thought as she allowed some of the tension she had been carrying to seep out of her body while she floated serenely in the center of the bay.

“It’s not safe to do that,” Amos’ voice startled her.

She twisted, sending her body into a spin that she was only able to stop by grabbing the rail of the mezzanine around the upper level of the bay. Turning to face the source of some of her stress, she frowned at him from across the bay.

“It’s not safe to sneak up on people, either.”

“If Alex was to maneuver the ship, you’d have a bad fall,” he continued, ignoring her comment. “That’s why we stay close to walls and hand-holds when we’re on the float.”

She hadn’t thought about that. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

She waited for Amos to either say something or to leave, but he did neither, letting the silence stretch out between them. For the first time, she could see that he was struggling with something. Used to working with angry or traumatized children, realization dawned. Shit, she had been expecting him to act like a typical adult. What if he wasn’t a typical adult? She had already likened him to the mentally sick boy they had spaced years ago, now she took it a step further. She knew some of the children she had encountered over the years had never truly recovered from what happened to them; some never made it to adulthood, others had become bullies and, later, thugs. Most had disappeared and she never saw them again. Was Amos one of the possible outcomes?  
Right now, Nik used the same strategy she did with them in this kind of situation; she remained silent and gave him the time he needed to work his way through whatever was going on in his head.

“I know you’re not a kid,” he broke the silence between them with the simple statement.

“Men like Lebron prey on the weak.” He held up his hand to forestall her response. “I know, you’re not weak, but most people can’t tell that by looking at you. People like him just don’t stop, though. Once you hurt him, he wasn’t going to stop until he hurt you back worse.”

He was right, she knew. She had run into many people like Lebron on the Tycho.

“And if he didn’t hurt you, he would go on to hurt others. Others that might not be able to take care of themselves like you, or who don’t have someone to take care of them.”

Nik thought of Mouse at the mercy of such a man and swallowed down the panic at that idea.

“He won’t get a chance to hurt anyone else now,” he shrugged.

Nik pushed away from the wall and glided across the space that divided them, grabbing the rail a meter away from him and pulling herself up and over before engaging her boots to stand beside him.

“He deserved it, I’m not angry about that,” she told him in a soft voice. “It’s the fact that you put all of your crew, your family, at risk doing it to protect me. There were smarter ways to get rid of him. If there wasn’t anyone else on board, we might have been able to cover it up, but now…?” she paused. “Now, we are going to have to deal with the Martians over it. You see that, right?”

Amos blew out a breath and leaned against the rail, staring at the far side of the bay. “Yeah, I usually fuck up when I make decisions on my own.”

She snorted a laugh, “don’t we all?”

He didn’t laugh in return.

She stepped up to his side and leaned on the rail, mimicking his stance.

“I had to space a kid once,” she said quietly, not looking at him. Quickly, she told him the story.

“I was the oldest, so I pushed the button. He was screaming at me the whole time about the horrible things that he would do to me if he got out. It was still hard,” she sniffled and swiped at a tear that threatened to fall. “I don’t think I would have been able to do it if he had been begging for his life, though. And I still wonder sometimes if I did the right thing. I mean, he was just a kid. The same age as Hopper and Lucky. What if he could have been saved?”

“Nah,” Amos pushed himself up from the rail to look down at her, “it was too late for that kid. Once someone gets to that point, there’s no saving them.”

“You can’t know that for sure.”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

With that, he turned and strode out of the bay, leaving a baffled Nik behind.


	22. Chapter 22

A few hours later, Alex called the crew to the bridge, the Martian freighters were less than twenty-four hours out and they had a MCRN Frigate as an escort.

“I guess they don’t want to take any chances this time,” Holden remarked.

“Well, folks, whatever we’re going to do, it best be fast,” Alex announced. “Once that frigate gets close, we’re not going to outrun it. It’s in better condition and has bigger guns.”

“Nik,” Naomi turned to her in her chair, “you’ve got an incoming message on a tight beam.” She motioned to an empty station.

Nik sat in the chair and keyed the console.

“Nik!” Maggie’s worried face filled the screen. “I hope you get this on time. The Martians are looking for you. Yes, you. They stopped and boarded the Eva a few hours ago. You’re still listed on the manifest as a passenger. They wouldn’t tell us why they were looking for you, though, but they were intense. We told them you didn’t make it off Tycho, that we had to leave without you. The captain told them the same thing, but they didn’t believe us. They went through every nook and cranny on this freighter before they were certain you weren’t on board. I gotta go. I don’t know what you did, Niki girl, but be careful!”

The message ended and Nik stared at the screen perplexed.

“What’s wrong?” Naomi asked, seeing her look.

“I think you guys need to hear this,” she told the crew.

“We can watch it later, Nik,” Naomi said. “We’ve got to figure out what to do about the MCRN first.”

“No, trust me, you need to hear this,” she insisted and put it on the speaker for everyone on the bridge to hear.

“What the fuck?” Holden asked when it had played. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” she told him. “As far as the system goes, I don’t even exist. Or at least I didn’t until a few days ago when Maggie got me an ID using my birth record.”

“Now is not the time to lie to us,” Holden warned her.

“I’m not lying.” She thought of the strange death certificates for her parents and the woman that told her to hide. “Look, there’s something strange going on and it might not have anything to do with this but…,” she hesitated, chewing on her lip.

“Go on,” Naomi encouraged her.

“I always thought my parents abandoned me on the station because I was so sick. I was only four at the time. Just after the first time I saw you on the station, you know, that day we stole your food. Maggie, the woman who sent that message, found their death certificates while looking for my files. There were two certificates, just with different dates and causes of death. The first cause of death was torture and having their throats slit. The second said they had been kidnapped by slavers and spaced before the slaver’s ship was captured by a MCRN ship.”

“Why two death certificates?” Holden asked.

“I don’t know, but if you do a search on them, only the second one comes up.”

“What does it have to do with the Martians looking for you now?”

“Maybe nothing, but don’t you think it’s odd that just weeks after I’m back in the system, they are searching ships for me? The only thing that connects me to Mars is my parents. They were Martian scientists, but I don’t know what they worked on.”

“If they were Martian’s,” Alex interjected, “they were on the terraforming project. Everyone on Mars in some way or another either works on or supports the project in some way.”

“You’ve been on the station for twenty years, you said?” Holden asked. “Why haven’t they come looking for you before?”

“Like I said, I was nothing but a ghost until a few days ago when Maggie got me an ID using my birth record.”

“Ok,” Naomi said from her chair, “let’s go on the assumption that your parents stole something and fled Mars. If they were killed for that, why would they assume you have it?”

Nik held up her hands, “I don’t know.”

Holden was quiet, contemplating the situation. “Alex, the Belters want to go to Vesta to rendezvous with a ship going to a ring colony. Can you plot a course to take us there that doesn’t look like we are going there?”

“In my sleep, Hos.”

“Do it.”

“Everybody strap in.”

“I’ll tell the Belters,” Naomi volunteered flipping switches on her console.

Alex only took a few moments to lay the course in.

“Okay, folks, this is going to be a rough one. We are going to have to burn hard for a while to do what the captain wants.”

“Nik,” Naomi’s voice said in her ear, “do you want me to put you out now?”

“No, I can take it,” she told the woman.

“It’s going to hurt.”

"I know. But if you guys are going to do this for me, I want to feel it too.”

She looked over and met Naomi’s eyes.

“Belta lik pahang, Sésata!”

“Belta lik pahang!”

****

Two hours later, Nik was seriously regretting her bravado. They had been burning in hard spurts with short breaks between the burns. Somehow, the breaks made the burns seem even worse and Nik would have preferred to just keep going and get it over with, but Naomi explained that their bodies needed the short breaks. At the moment, her body felt like it was trapped under a huge weight that made it hard to draw a full breath. The only good thing was that her headache was gone.

“Okay folks, that’s it,” Alex announced as the pressure disappeared. “We’re on the float for the next few days.”

With a grunt, Naomi released her harness and pushed away from her chair.

“Nik, can you give me a hand?” she asked.

“Sure,” Nik was glad for an excuse to get out of the chair and followed her down the ladder. She was only a little surprised when Naomi led the way to the room she and Holden shared. Ushering Nik in, she closed the door behind them.

“Now,” she said, “did you leave anything out of your story?”

“There isn’t much more to it,” Nik responded, then told her about Lilly-Ann and her disappearance and subsequent death.

“Anything else?”

“No, that’s all I know, and I only know that because of the death certificates that Maggie found. Those and this stupid marble are all that I have that connect me to my parents,” she held up her wrist and shook it, causing the marble to swing back and forth wildly.

“Huh, I wonder what the hell the Martians think you have,” Naomi propelled herself over to Nik’s side and absently looked at the marble attached to her wrist. “Pretty. It matches your eyes.”

“I think that’s why it was given to me. Originally it was a necklace, but the chain broke years ago.”

The older woman patted her on the shoulder, “I’ll do some research on your parents and get Jim to reach out to someone who owes him a favor or two, but we’re going to go silent in a few minutes and stay that way for a while, so it will have to wait for now.”

Nik cradled her wrist and rubbed the marble worriedly. She wasn’t sure she wanted to find out what her parents were involved with.

****

Silent running was one of the ways a ship could avoid being tracked. By shutting down all power, ceasing all transmissions, and limiting heat generation, the Roci was rendered practically invisible to all by the naked eye. Of course, if they were already being tracked before they went quiet, their course could be extrapolated with a small margin of error. Hopefully, the MRCN frigate hadn’t been tracking them, but on the highly probable chance that it had been, Alex had a trick up his sleeve.

With the temperatures on board dropping close to freezing, Nik and the Belters took to their quarters and stay bundled up in their bunks, or wardrobe in Nik’s case. She still wasn’t using the bed in her room. On the odd occasion that she emerged for food, she usually found the galley empty.

When she went for food on the second day, Amos was standing near the table eating with quiet determination.

Grabbing a bulb of coffee and a pouch of red kibble, she sat opposite him at the table wrapping her feet around the post of the bench to hold herself in place.

“Anything good?” she asked just to break the silence.

“Just some leftover lasagna that Alex made. It sucks cold but it’s better than that stuff,” he gestured at her pouch.

“What? Red kibble? This stuff is the best.” She popped a handful into her mouth and chewed.

“Then you’ve never had real food.”

She frowned, “I have. Remember those boxes of combat rations in Maggie’s room? We ate them for over a month. My favorite was curried soy protein, but it still wasn’t as good as this,” she shook the pouch at him.

“Must not have been too good, then,” he grunted.

She just grinned and continued eating her kibble. This time the silence that stretched out between them wasn’t uncomfortable. When Amos finished his food, he dropped the empty container into the recycling chute.

“You bored?” he asked.

Nik looked up at him, “yes.”

“Want to go outside and help me?”

“Aren’t we supposed to be running silent?” she asked.

“Yep, and this will help keep us that way.”

Curious, she dropped the rest of her kibble down the chute with her empty bulb and followed him out of the galley.

****

“You stay here with this one and wait for Naomi to give you directions. I’ll go strap this one down by the comm array,” Amos told her as he stood up from strapping an oxygen pack to the hull. “I’ll be where I can see you. If you get into trouble call me.” He tapped the side of his helmet.

She nodded with her fist, “got it.”

Amos left her by the pack and carefully walked to his destination, leaving her to her thoughts. She was starting to get used to the way he spoke in brief, precise clips and how his demeaner changed depending on who was around. She had not decided if she liked or even trusted him yet, but she was more at ease with him than she had been. He seemed to care about her safety, but she was sure if it came down to choosing between one of the others on the Roci’s crew and her, she would be on the losing side. That’s just how it worked out here, though. Your crewmates were your family and you protected your family. She wasn’t their family, but she wondered what it would be like.

“Nik?” Naomi interrupted her thoughts.

“Go ahead.”

“I need you to position the nozzle 32.45 degrees up from the hull and 72.1 degrees from the center line of the ship while facing the thrusters.”

“Got it. Give me a moment,” she responded.

Using a laser protractor, she positioned the nozzle as directed. After verifying the angles again, she told Naomi, “kay, 32.45 degrees up and 72.1 degrees from the center line. Ready.”

“Make sure you’re clipped to something in case your boots fail,” Naomi warned.

“Ya, I’m good.”

“Get ready in three, two, one, activate.”

Nik triggered the pack, directing the discharge of air into space and waited for the signal to turn it off. As the Roci shifted course slightly, she could feel the change in velocity pushing against her and was glad she was clipped to one of the pad-eyes embedded in the hull.

“Okay, turn it off in three, two, one, and off.”

“Confirmed, it’s off.”

“Good job, Nik. Stay there. We’ll need one more burst from you in a few minutes.”

The concept was simple, the force of the packs would change the Roci’s trajectory just enough that the MRCN ship couldn’t predict its true course. The original course Alex had plotted was to Ganymede, but their altered course would take them near Vesta. They would have to use their thrusters once they got close, but until then, nobody would know where they were heading.

Naomi kept the comm open for Nik to listen to her instructions to Amos. His discharge lasted almost twice as long as hers, all but exhausting the pack. As he began dismantling his set-up, Naomi gave Nik her next set of angles. He waited until her second discharge was over before he unclipped his tether and headed over to her.

“Well, I guess our excitement for the day is over,” she smiled as he approached even though he couldn’t see her face.

“Give it a couple days, then it will be safe to use more power. There are still some repairs needed, if you want something to do.”

“Ya, by then I’ll need something to do to keep me from losing my mind,” she eagerly answered.

“Don’t get too excited. One of them is on the bio-waste recycling system.”

She made a face, but answered, “anything is better than nothing.”

“You might change your mind once we get started and you’re up to your neck in shit and piss.”

Nik was still smiling when they reached the airlock hatch.

“Hang on, guys, we got incoming!”

Amos yanked her into the airlock and slapped the close switch.

“We’re inside. What is it?” Amos barked over the comm link.

Before Alex could answer, the ship jerked sideways and the two of them flew across the air lock to slam into the inner hull. Nik was between Amos and the wall and bore the brunt of the impact, knocking the breath out of her.

“What the hell was that?” Amos demanded over the link.

“Just a stray baby asteroid. It struck us a glancing blow,” Alex replied. “Ya’ll okay?”

“Yeah, I guess.” He paused, “you okay, Kitten?”

“Ya,” she croaked, still trying to take a breath. “Try not to…hit…the mother…Alex.”

“Hey!” he protested. “It hit us, not the other way around.”

She gave a pained laugh as she pushed away from the wall, then stopped when she saw her bracelet. “God damnit.”

“You hurt?” Amos turned her around towards him, his eyes skimming over her body searching for injuries.

“Na,” she frowned and held up her wrist, “just cracked my marble.”

The corner of Amos’ lips twitched, and she burst out laughing at what she had said.

“Good thing the one on your shoulders is harder,” he finally smiled.

“Ya, there’re worse things I could have cracked, I guess.”

They were still smiling as they left the airlock.


	23. Chapter 23

Tycho Station may have been past its glory days when deconstruction started, but if Vesta had ever had glory days, they were so far in the past as to be only a wistful dream. Dark, dirty, and crowded it was home to the largest population in the outer planets, all confined within a few kilometers of subsurface structures and tunnels.

The smell immediately assaulted Nik as the airlock opened from the docks on the surface to the terminal that served as the point of entry into the colony. Air exchangers and purifiers were never 100% efficient, but the ones on the asteroid were designed to support a much smaller population. In fact, nothing on the asteroid had been designed to support the current demands of the colony. Waste recycling, water reclamation, climate control; all were overtaxed to just short of the point of failure.

Seeing the reactions of the crew as they entered the terminal, she couldn’t help but think about her life on Tycho. This, she thought, was perfect for station rats like her. With so many people, wayward children would have been all but invisible. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye as two children wove through the crowd looking for unwary marks. One had already spotted her group and was making his way towards them. She thought about warning the others, then just kept quiet. Who was she to deprive the station’s children of their livelihood?

Weaving their way through the mass of people, the crew of the Roci broke up into teams, each with their own assignment. Holden was going to contact someone he knew for information on why the MCRN was looking for her, her parents, and the research they were doing. Nik had no idea who is contact was, but he had assured her that if there was anything out there, they would find it. Alex and Naomi were going to stock up on provisions. Almost anything could be found on the station for a price.

Nik and Amos were tasked with making repairs to the Roci. In addition to the damage the ship had taken at Tycho Station, the stray asteroid had damaged its rail gun and a landing support strut. She wasn’t sure why Holden and the others had begun to treat her as a, maybe not a full crew member, but definitely no longer just a passenger, but over the last few days they had included her in their planning discussions.

The asteroid had knocked them off their course, so Alex had to engage the engines earlier than originally planned, giving away their location sooner. They calculated that they had maybe three days before the MCRN was too close for comfort. Whatever repairs were needed, she and Amos only had two days before the Roci departed the station.

Leaving the terminal, they headed towards the industrial section of the station. If the terminal had seemed crowded, the thoroughfares of the stations were a continuous mass of moving bodies. Weaving with the flow, she realized this would be the perfect place to hide. Nobody knew her here and the Belters were so distrusting of inners – Amos was getting a lot of hostile looks – that she was sure she could just disappear. Even if the MCRN knew for certain she was here, it would be virtually impossible for them to find her.

“It would be easy to disappear here,” Amos said over the noise around them as if guessing her thoughts.

Nik started, “yes, it would.”

“You could start over here if you wanted,” he continued.

“Are you trying to get rid of me?” she teased.

“No, but it would be the smart thing to do.”

“You forget I have a family waiting for me on Ganymede.”

“You would only be putting them in danger if you joined them,” he pointed out.

“Then I will need to fix things before then,” she snapped, annoyed by his statement for some inexplicable reason. “If you aren’t willing to help me, I’ll find someone that will.”

“What if you can’t fix it?”

That was it. She shoved her way out of the flow of traffic, garnering several curses in the process. Once at the side of the tunnel, she rounded on Amos, who had followed her.

“Why are you doing this?” she demanded.

“You need to be realistic, Kitten,” he replied calmly. “This might not be something you can fix. Ever.”

“Well, at least I can say I tried,” she poked him with a finger in the chest. “I’m a Belter, we don’t give up just because something is hard. Look around you. We aren’t meant to be out here, but here we are, living somewhere we have no business being. If we gave up because it’s hard, we’d all be stuck on Earth still.”

He stared down at her for a bit. Nik couldn’t read his expression and it infuriated her further. She was gearing up for another round when he said, “are you done?”

The simple question stopped her cold. Blinking, she replied, “ya, I’ve said my piece.”

“Good,” he nodded. “Now, let’s fix the ship so we can get off this rock.”

He pushed his way back into the flow of bodies, expecting her to follow. After a hesitation, she did.

“Asshole.”

****

Hours later, hot and sweaty, Nik flopped down on her bunk and shut her eyes for just a moment. When she opened them again, the ship was quiet. Cleaning up quickly and putting on a clean set of coveralls, she left her room looking for the others. She found Alex in the galley.

“Where is everyone?”

“They went to get something to eat. You were sleeping, or they would have asked if you wanted to go,” he told her.

“What about you? Why didn’t you go?”

“Me? Nah, I’d rather be here. They’ll bring something back for me later.”

“I think I’ll go explore some,” she mused.

“If you want to join them, they’ll be at the Randy Dog. Oh, before I forget,” he held something out to her, “this is for you.”

She took the credit stick and looked at him questioningly.

“It’s not much, but you could use some clothes that actually fit. Or something else you need.”

She looked down stick and murmured, “I’ve never had new clothes.”

“Then go buy something pretty for yourself.”

She blinked back tears and turned her back to him so he couldn’t see. “Thanks, Alex.”

****

Nik quickly blended in with the crowds and quickly found her way to one of the market sections. Wandering by various shops, carts, and makeshift stalls, sometimes no more than a blanket spread on the floor, she made herself go down the entire length of the area to get an idea of what was available at different vendors before she started shopping. The first shop she went into was full of expensive accessories made from simulated animal hides. The owner followed her around the few minutes she was inside to ensure she didn’t steal anything. She supposed she looked pretty scruffy in her working coveralls and her long, unkept braid.

The back of her neck prickled, making her turn around, but nobody was there. Still, she thought she saw a movement and stepped out of the shop quickly to catch whoever might have been watching her. Nobody in the passing crowd seemed out of place or even gave her a passing glance.

“I’m getting paranoid,” she said softly.

The next shop was more to her liking, selling mid-priced clothing in various synthetic fabrics. A purple tunic with silver trim made from a soft fabric caught her attention. It was small enough to fit and would look great with a matching pair of pants. It was tempting, but with a sigh, she put it back on the rack. She didn’t want to bring any additional attention to herself with the bright color. In the belt, the most prevalent colors were black and gray. Purple would make her stand out in any crowd. No, it wouldn’t do.

In the next rack, was a light gray shirt with intricate stitching around the neck and cuffs in a slightly darker gray. It was well made and sturdy, with long twin belts that wrapped around her waist twice to hold the shirt snuggly. This, this was what she was looking for. She would look nice in it while still blending in. Finding a pair of pants just a bit darker, she had a complete outfit. On the way to find the shopkeeper, she spotted a scarf in a pretty shade of deep purple and grabbed it. Maybe just one pretty thing wouldn’t hurt.

She made a few more purchases in the market, including a pair of shoes that weren’t mag-boots, before she made her way to a specialty shop. Before she entered, she had that feeling of being watched again, but still couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from. Nobody looked familiar around her.

When she stepped out of the shop, she felt like a new person. Her hair was clean and shiny black in its new shorter cut. The ends just brushed the back of her neck and braids at each temple pulled it away from her fact. She had changed into her new clothes, though gray they were still nice and made the most of her slight figure. She had grinned when she saw herself in the mirror: she was almost pretty.

Her marble now hung from a silvery polymer cord around her neck, she held it up in front of her face to squint at the hairline crack. She frowned when she noticed a tiny smudge of something dark on the crack and rubbed it off with her fingertip. Dropping the gray orb to hang from its cord, she smoothed her hands down her sides. She was ready to go find the others from the Roci.

Checking her handheld for directions to the Randy Dog, she made her way back the way she came. Instead of taking the tunnel to the port of entry, she turned the other way, in the direction of the entertainment sector. A flashing sign caught her eye and she froze in place, making the people behind her mutter as they pushed past. Standing at a cart under the sign was Mac, the man responsible for killing Hopper. He was talking to a rough-looking man with multiple OPA tattoos on his face. There was a bag on the cart in front of them.

Realizing she was easy to spot standing still in the middle of the tunnel, Nik pushed her way out of the flow of traffic to the wall of the tunnel several meters away from the two men. She watched as Mac reached into the bag, pulled out a familiar pouch, and handed it to the other man. It was one of the combat rations from the Tycho. He and his men must have got the rest of the boxes off the station.

She wasn't close enough to hear what was being said, but it looked like they were bickering over the pouch. After a few minutes of back and forth, they must have reached an agreement because Mac handed the bag over to the other man. She snapped a couple of stills of the two men, careful to not let anyone see. They talked for a little longer, then Mac slapped the man on the back and started walking down the tunnel towards her.

Nik stepped behind a vendor, thankful once again for her small size, and let him pass before following him. He went deep into the warren of tunnels into one of the run-down residential sectors. When Mac entered a cheap hostel, she broke off her pursuit. She snapped a still of the hostel before leaving to find the others. She needed to come up with a plan, but now that she knew where to find him, she was going to make him pay for killing her friend.

As she made her way to the entertainment district, thinking about what she could do to Mac, she never noticed the second man following her.

****

Entering the Randy Dog, Nik looked around for the crew of the Roci. She spotted Naomi and Holden sitting at a table near the back of the bar, their heads bent together as they talked and smiled. Loathed to interrupt the couple, Nik looked around for Amos. She spotted him at the bar between two women throwing back a drink. Slamming the empty glass on the bar, he leaned over and whispered something in one of the women’s ear. The woman was beautiful in a way Nik could never hope to be. Tall and willowy, she exuded sexiness even without the help of her scanty clothes. She leaned away and said something in response before sliding gracefully off her stool and led Amos, followed by the second woman to a door that led to rooms behind the bar.

Just as he went through, Amos’ eyes landing on Nik standing frozen in the middle of the bar. He gave her a slight nod, the disappeared as the door closed.

Nik spun and left the bar, not hearing Naomi call out her name. Back at the Roci, she peeled off her new clothes, throwing them carelessly on the floor, then crawled into the wardrobe to cry herself miserably to sleep.

****

The next day, neither Nik nor Amos mentioned what transpired at the bar. Nik told herself that it wasn’t any of her business what he did on his own time. That her fit of crying had been because she seen Mac and it had brought up all the feelings associated with Hopper's death. It wasn’t because she wanted Amos to see her in her new clothes and think of her as a woman, not a child to be rescued and protected. And it was definitely not because she was jealous of the two women. Nope. She was stressed and had been through a lot in the past months. She had been due for some kind of break down. That was all.

Then why was she still mad?

The two of them worked in silence suspended from the side of the Roci, only speaking when necessitated by their work. The fact that he didn’t even mention her new haircut was like rubbing salt in the wound. As the day went by, instead of calming down, Nik just got angrier. When they took a break for lunch, she hurried down ahead of Amos and went straight to her room.

After lunch, when they went back to work, the fact that he didn’t comment on her absence just pissed her off more.

That night, Holden gathered the five of them in the galley.

“There are rumors all over the station that the MCRN is stopping and searching any ship that was docked at Tycho for the last three months,” Naomi told the group.

“I’m hearing the same think over the channels,” Alex added.

“So, they are still looking for Nik,” Holden surmised as he paced back and forth in the small space.

“Did your contact find anything?” she asked him.

“Yes and no,” he answered. “Your parents were listed as wanted fugitives on Mars for stealing research. Now you are wanted for questioning about it. They have you listed as a fugitive. That’s all Christjen has been able to dig up so far, but she had some other resources she’s going to reach out to.”

“That’s not very helpful.”

“No,” he shook his head, “it isn’t.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment before he spoke again.

“There’s a MCRN frigate on its way here. It will be here in two days.”

Nik’s heart dropped. She was afraid of what he was going to say next, so she beat him to it.

“You guys need to get leave before they get here. I’ve been thinking about it. I can just disappear here. They would never find me.”

“What? No,” Holden said.

“Not going to happen,” Alex shook his head.

“I thought you were going to fight this?” Amos asked from the other side of the room.

“Wait,” she held up a hand to stop them before they could get going. “This is not your fight. You were just unfortunate enough to get caught in the middle of it. I can’t ask you to put yourselves in anymore danger for me.”

“You don’t have to ask,” Holden said. “Everyone in favor of helping Nik?”

“Definitely,” Naomi answered.

“Hell, yeah,” from Alex.

“Fuck the MCRN,” Amos nodded.

“So, it’s decided,” Holden announced smugly. “Amos, where are you and Nik on the repairs?”

“We need just a few more hours to finish up.”

“Then get on it. We leave in twelve hours.”

Nik stood in shocked stillness as the others filed out of the galley. As Amos walked out, he paused and looked over at her.

“Welcome to the family.”


	24. Chapter 24

Still slightly in shock from the turn of events, Nik quietly followed Amos back to work. They had completed repairs on the docking strut, but the rail gun was being troublesome. They couldn’t quite get the newly installed guide rails to line up with the armatures. Microscopic burs on the rails interfered with the shape of the magnetic field that ran down the armatures, deforming it and causing less thrust on one side of the test projectile, making it jump off the rail in every simulation they ran.

Finally, tired and frustrated, they were forced to stop working on it as the time for departure drew near. Nik returned to her room telling Amos she needed a short nap. Stepping inside, she immediately noticed a box on her bunk. It was just a plain, grayish-brown box made from recycled synthetic cellulose, devoid of markings to indicate what it contained.

Lifting the lid off it, Nik was shocked to see the purple tunic and pants she had admired but had decided against buying for practical reasons. Included in the box was a delicate pair of slippers that matched the silver trim of the tunic. They were exactly the right size.

“What the hell?”

Someone had been following her that night, but who? Of course, it had to be one of the crew, but which one? Holden may have insisted on helping her, but this was too intimate a gift for a man in love with another woman. Naomi would have just given her the gift without the mystery. Amos was too practical. Besides, he had been with the two women that night. There was no way it was him.

That only left Alex, but he hadn’t given her any indication that he felt anything towards her but camaraderie. But he was the only person unaccounted for that night. He had given her the credit stick and told her to go buy herself something pretty. It could just be a gesture of friendship and nothing more. After all, she had no idea how friendships with adults worked. She would have to thank him for the gift and hope that it didn’t mean anything more than that. She wasn’t the least bit attracted to him and didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

Right now, though wasn't the time to think about it. She still had business on the station. Storing the lovely outfit, she dug her old clothes out of a drawer; she needed to be a station rat one last time.

****

Slipping easily through the crowds, Nik retraced her steps to the hostel where Mac was staying and concealed herself behind an abandoned beverage kiosk to wait. She didn't have a lot of time, the Roci was going to depart in three hours, but this might be her only chance to ever extract justice for Hopper. Luckily, she didn't have to wait for more than half an hour before Mac appeared at the entrance of the Hostel. Slinging a heavy bag over his shoulder, he headed out of the sector. Tapping the sharp file in her pocket that she had taken from one of Amos' tool chests, she followed at a distance.

As the traffic around them increased, she shortened the distance between them until she was just a few steps behind him. She had the file out, in her hand, ready to be used when the opportunity presented itself.

In a congested intersection, she saw her opening. As Mac turned to go towards the entertainment sector, she slipped by him with the flow of bodies going towards the market. As she passed behind him, all she had to do was stab him in the kidney then disappear into the crowd. No one would see and he would bleed out withing minutes. But as she slipped past, her hand froze and she missed her opportunity.

Cheeks burning and fuming at her cowardice, she turned down a side tunnel that circled back to the residential sector. Her head down, she wasn't paying attention to her surroundings. Her arm was grabbed and she was jerked unceremoniously into a dark alcove. A strong arm wrapped around her waist like an iron band and a large hand covered her mouth to keep her from screaming.

“Shh,” a familiar voice whispered in her ear.

She quit struggling, but didn't relax. How could she with Amos pressed up against her back? He removed his hand from her mouth.

“Wait for it,” he whispered again.

In just a few seconds, the second man walked past their hiding place.

“You didn't know he was following you, did you?” Amos said softly in her ear after he passed.

Nik burned with embarrassment. She should have been checking for someone following her, but the thought had never occurred. She had screwed up and if it hadn't been for Amos, again, she would have been in deep trouble.

He loosened his hold and turned her around to face him.

“Why were you following him?”

She was still uncomfortably close to him and had to crane her neck to meet his eyes, but if she stepped back, she could easily be seen by anyone looking for her.

“He's the one that killed Hopper,” she said simply.

Amos grabbed her hand with the file and held it up, putting enough pressure on her wrist for her to release it.

“And you were going to stab him with this?”

She bit her lip and angry tears filled her eyes.

“I had a chance and I couldn't do it,” she admitted softly.

He sighed and looked over her head at nothing in particular, “not everyone can kill, Kitten.”

“But he needs to pay for what he did to Hopper.”

“Well, you've missed your chance and the Roci is leaving soon. Go back to the ship.”

He turned her back around and pushed her back out into the tunnel. She looked over her shoulder at him still standing in the shadows of the alcove.

“Aren't you coming?”

“I've got some business to take care of first. Go on. I'll be back before it leaves.”

He was probably going to visit the two pretty prostitutes one last time, she thought and turned away to go back to the ship. He was probably irritated that he had to use some of the time he had left saving her from her own stupidity.

****

She easily slipped back onto the Roci without any of the crew seeing her. In her room, she pulled off her clothes and changed into her coveralls. Her station rat rags bundled in her hand, she stopped before putting them back in the drawer and sat on the bunk, holding them in her lap.

Being an adult was a lot harder than being a child. Unlike the others on board, she had never had the opportunity to make the awkward transition from child to adult slowly as they matured. No, she had been stayed basically a child, trapped by circumstance and her own fears. While she would never regret her time with the orphans of Tycho, she was at a severe disadvantage now. She needed to grow up and fast.

Her mind made up, she stood and took the bundle of clothes to the recycler and placed them inside. Not giving herself time to second guess her decision, she pushed the button and watched the clothes disappear. Now, if only becoming an adult was that easy.

**** 

“I borrowed the transponder code from the Blue Angela. It’s about the same size and mass as the Roci,” Naomi was telling Holden and Amos when she joined them on the bridge.

“That will work. I can time our departure to coincide with the Dorthea and the Binh-Wei, they’re close to the same size,” Alex started typing commands at his console.

“That’s about as stealthy as we’re going to get, I guess,” Holden nodded to Naomi. “Go ahead and change the code.”

As Naomi stood to leave the bridge, Nik intercepted her, “can I come along?”

“Sure, come on. You need to learn something besides welding and fixing coffee makers,” she smiled.

Down below, kneeling on the floor on either side of the panel, Nik watched as Naomi changed the chips on the transponder, referring to her handheld from time to time.

“There, all done. We are now the Blue Angela.”

Instead of pushing the tray holding the cards back into the panel, she looked up at Nik, “is there something you wanted to ask me?”

Suddenly embarrassed, Nik flushed, her entire body heating up.

“It’s going to sound stupid,” she started.

“Sésata, what is it?”

Before she changed her mind, she blurted out, “I don't know how to be an adult, like you.” Her cheeks and ears burned, and she looked down so she didn't have to see the amusement on Naomi's face.

“Oh, sweetie,” Naomi said softly, “there's no set way to be an adult. Most of us are still figuring it out ourselves.”

“But I keep doing stupid things.”

Naomi laughed at that.

“Oh, no, I’m not laughing at you!” she grabbed Nik’s arm as she tried to stand to escape. “I’m laughing because I remember what it’s like to be so young.”

“I’m not that young, I just look it,” Nik frowned.

“I know,” she said. After a pause, she continued, “look, I don't know everything, but I do know that part of being an adult is putting others before yourself. You've been doing that for years on Tycho. So, you've been an adult for a long time, Sésata, you just didn't realize it. You need to stop being so hard on yourself.”

“How do you tell if someone likes you?” she flushed even redder and wouldn’t look into the other woman’s face. “Like Holden likes you,” she clarified.

Naomi laughed delightedly.

“I bet you’ve never been in love, right?”

Nik smiled sadly, “kinda hard to fall in love when the only people around you are children.”

“True,” Naomi agreed.

Nik told her about the package and her suspicions. When she was through, Naomi sat back on her heals and looked thoughtful.

“Alex was married and has a child,” she began, “and he still loves his ex-wife. But he loves being a pilot more. This,” she indicated the ship with a sweep of her hand, “this is his true love. So, I find it highly unlikely the clothes were from him. Besides, he sucks at being sneaky. He couldn’t have pulled that off.”

“Then who?”

“I have my suspicions,” she pushed in the tray then patted Nik on the shoulder as she stood up.

“Damn it, Naomi,” Nik grabbed her arm this time. “Just tell me.”

Naomi just smiled, “no, you need to figure it out on your own.” She paused, then added, “I like what you did with your hair. It looks good on you.” Then she stood and climbed the ladder back up to the bridge.

Nik heaved a frustrated sigh and kicked the wall, careful to miss the panel that hid the transponder.

“You break it, you fix it.”

She spun around to confront the speaker. Amos was standing in the doorway, leaning casually against the frame.

Multiple responses ran through Nik’s mind, a crazy mixture of friendly, indifferent, and rude. In short, mirroring the different feelings being around him invoked. She wished she could figure out how she felt about him. Of course, it would help if she could figure him out. Every time she thought she had it, he would do something completely contradictory and put her back off balance.

“Better strap in,” he broke into her thoughts.

Nik flushed, realizing she had just been staring blankly at him. Without a word, she strapped into a chair to prepare for departing Vesta.


	25. Chapter 25

“Hey, Nik, can you take a look at the isolation amplifier on the MPC?” Naomi called her over the comm system. “Alex is complaining that the flight controls are a little off.”

“Got it,” she replied and pulled up a schematic on her console.

A few minutes later, she was frowning at the interior of the panel. The green grounding wire for the primary circuit was bare in places, the insulating coating looked like it had been corroded. It was an easy enough repair, but the polymer coating used as insulation was designed to be corrosion resistant. Belter ships were known for using substandard materials, but the Roci had been a MCRN ship and would have been constructed with the best materials. 

“What did you find?” Naomi asked from behind her.

“The ground wire’s insulation is gone in places.”

“Strange,” Naomi peered over her shoulder. “I just found the same thing on the backup GPC.”

“I’ll go get some wire from the maintenance bay and replace both.” She paused, “do you want me to take a look at other systems?”

“I was thinking the same thing. It wouldn’t hurt.”

“Well, at least I won’t get bored,” she laughed.

Three hours later, she was no longer in a laughing mood. Every panel she had opened had at least some of the odd corrosion on the ground wires and some panels had some on the power and control wiring. She had even found one circuit card with a ragged hole the size of her pinky finger through it. It was time to talk to Naomi and Holden.

Something else was nagging her; she was sure there was a pattern to the damage, she just couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

Climbing the ladder to the bridge, she found all four of the crew members already gathered in a discussion.

“Hey, I was just going to call you up here,” Naomi greeted her. “We’re discussing where we’re going.”

“Doesn’t matter to me since we can’t go where I want to go until this mess with Mars is cleared up,” she told the group. “Where are you thinking?”

Holden answered, “the slow zone seems like the best bet. Medina station won’t turn us over to the MCRN and they can’t open fire on it. The only drawback is they can intercept any information we receive or transmit so they will know what we know.”

“Well, if they can’t get to us, maybe we can ask them what exactly they’re looking for. Offer to cooperate from the safety of the station?” Nik suggested.

“Might be worth a try,” Holden agreed. “Unless anyone has a better idea, Alex, take us to the ring gate.”

The matter decided, the crew started to disperse, but Nik kept her place at the top of the ladder, forestalling their departure.

“Um, there’s something else,” she told them. “That strange corrosion we found on the grounding wires…,”

“Did you find more?” Naomi asked with a frown.

“A lot more. Every system on the ship is affected. And it gets worse. Some systems have it on other wires also. I also found it on a circuit card in the comm system.”

“What is she talking about?” Holden asked Naomi.

Naomi explained what they had found earlier.

“Are you saying something is eating the wiring on my ship?” he asked in shock.

“No, just the insulation on the wires,” Nik corrected.

“What is causing it?”

“We don’t know, Jim. We’re just focusing on replacing the affected wires right now.”

“And that brings me to the next problem,” Nik put in quickly. “I’m running out of wire and we don’t have the raw material to print more.”

“How much do you need?” Amos asked.

“I think there’s enough to replace all that I’ve found so far, but if it keeps degrading, we’ll have to start scavenging from non-essential systems,” she answered.

“What do you mean?” Amos pressed.

“Well, we don’t know how long it’s been going on. If it was a one-time incident, or if it’s on going. If it’s still happening, we don’t know how fast. All we can do is replace the damaged wiring and keep an eye on it until we get to Medina.”

“Okay,” Holden nodded. “Do that and work on the cause.”

“Here,” she pulled a piece of the affected wire out of her pocked to Naomi. As the other woman reached for it, Holden grabbed her arm, stopping her.

“Maybe you should wear gloves?” he said looking pointedly at Nik’s bare hand.

“Not a bad idea, but probably too late for me.”

“Humor me and do it anyway,” he smiled, making him look closer to Nik’s age.

Down on the comms deck, Amos stopped Nik before she could get far.

“I’ll give you a hand.”

“There’s no need. It’s simple work,” she waved him away.

“There’s a lot of wire to replace. Two people will make it go faster.”

He had a point. Arguing it further would just make her sound like a bitch.

“I need another roll of wire from the maintenance bay. Can you get it and meet me in the cargo bay?”

“Yep,” he said as he turned away.

“Oh, and a pair of gloves,” she called after him.

“Got it.”

In the cargo bay, Nik took a moment to collect herself before Amos joined her. She had to admit that she found working with him was enjoyable. They seemed to a certain easy harmony that didn’t require a lot of conversation; each knowing almost instinctively what the other person required before asked. It was when they weren’t working that she found herself on shaky ground. The problem was that she could never tell what he was thinking. His expression didn’t give away his thoughts like most other people. Knowing what others were thinking allowed her to predict their actions and reactions. Being around Amos was like walking around blindfolded. She never knew what to expect until she was already tripped up and falling.

Being around him wasn’t like being around Hopper or Lucky. With them, she didn’t have to watch for cues because she trusted them. She could just relax and be herself. She wasn’t so tense around the others on the Roci, either.

That was the problem, she realized. She was still treating him like an outsider. What was it about him that made it impossible for her treat him like the others?

“I just need to stop being an idiot,” she muttered. Quit trying to analyze everything he said and did. Quit being on edge around him. Quit getting angry every time she thought of him with those prostitutes. Imagining what he did with them. Remembering what it felt like to be held against his body. Wondering how it would feel naked.

Something creaked in the bay, making her jump and derailing her thoughts. Where the hell did those thoughts come from?

“I’ve got to be out of my damn mind.” 

To take her mind off that disturbing train of thoughts, she pulled open the first panel just inside the bay door.

“Felota,” she whispered in shock.

By the time Amos got to the bay, she had four more panels open, each one closer to the airlock, the last one the airlock door controls. The pattern that had been niggling at the back of her consciousness was suddenly clear.

“Amos, I figured it out,” she rounded on him as he walked across to where she stood by the airlock.

“What?”

“The pattern! I see the pattern now. Look,” she grabbed him by the hand and pulled him closer to the panel. Inside almost all the wires were bare. The display for the airlock was flashing ERROR in broken letters.

“Shit,” he breathed. “This is bad.”

“Yes, yes, it is, but that’s not what I’m looking at. Here,” still holding his hand, she pulled him behind her to the next panel away from the airlock. It was bad, but not as bad as the other. She showed him each panel until they were back at the door into the bay.

“Can you see it?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“They get better as we get farther away from the airlock.”

“Exactly!” she slapped him on the arm in her excitement. He looked baffled at the move but didn’t say anything.

“That means the contamination started in the airlock,” she explained.

He nodded, “then we can use that to figure out what caused it.” He smiled, “good job, Kitten.”

This time she just beamed back at him.

****

They barely had enough wire to cover all the repairs in the cargo bay. There were still other parts of the ship they needed to check, but all the primary systems were complete. After briefing the others on what she found and explaining the pattern that had emerged, Nik went to the galley to grab a quick bite to eat before she surveyed the rest of the ship’s electronics. If her theory was correct, though, there shouldn’t be a lot of damage anywhere else on board.

Before she could grab a pouch of kibble, Amos entered and tossed a pouch at her. Catching it, she looked at it with disbelief. It was one of the MCRN combat rations like what her and the others had found on Tycho.

“Where did you get this?”

In reply, Amos hefted a heavy bag and dropped it on the tabletop. It was the bag that Mac had been carrying while she stalked him. Swallowing her next question, she stayed silent, willing him to explain.

“He won’t be hurting anyone else,” was all the explanation she got before he turned and walked away.

She stood there stunned at the revelation for a few breaths, then threw the pouch on the table and went after him. She caught up with him as he shut the door to his room, grabbing it to keep it from closing completely and following him inside.

“What the hell, Amos?” she asked as he turned to regard her. “You told me to go back to the ship and then you went and did what you stopped me from doing?” She stepped close to him to glare up at him. “I was supposed to do it. Me!” She shoved him in the chest with the last word, but she might as well have been shoving the wall.

“Hopper was my friend, my family. You didn’t even know him. I should have been the one to avenge him. I should have been the one to protect him. I should have known better. I should have said no,” her voice cracked. She pushed Amos again.

“I should have said no. I should have known it was too dangerous.”

At the last, she burst into tears and would have sagged to the floor if he hadn’t caught her and held her close.

“It’s okay. Let it go,” he told her.

“No, it’s not okay. He’s dead and it’s my fault. He was just a kid and I should have protected him better,” she sobbed.

“You can’t protect everyone, Kitten. No matter how hard you try.”

After that, she just cried herself out while he held her, offering her support in silence. When she ran out of tears, she pushed away from him.

“I’m sorry,” she wiped her nose with her sleeve and tried to compose herself. She was sure she looked a mess and was embarrassed by her display. Putting some distance between them, she looked up at him again.

“Can I ask you something?”

He shrugged.

Taking that as a yes, she asked, “why? Why did you do it?”

He considered her question for just a bit before answering. “Two reasons. First, nobody should get away with what he did.”

When he didn’t go on, she prompted, “and the other?”

He did that strange thing where he looked at you with a blank expression and shrugged, “you wanted him to die.”

Nik opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She just stood there gaping at him trying to get her scrambled thoughts together to produce a coherent sentence.

Finally, in a weak voice, “you killed him because I wanted him dead?”

“And because he deserved it.”

She had nothing to say at that. She stepped towards the door, “I think I better go.”

Reaching to open it, she paused as another thought hit her. Turning back to him she asked quietly, “did you buy me the clothes?”

He nodded. “You wanted them.”

She thought about it for a moment, then walked over to him. Reaching up to grab his shoulders, she pulled him down to her as she stood on her toes to place a soft kiss on his lips. He didn’t push her away, but he didn’t touch her either, he just let her kiss him. She pulled away a hair’s breadth and whispered, “thank you. For everything.”

Then she released him and left the room without looking back.


	26. Chapter 26

The door to the medical room closed behind Nik as she joined the rest of the crew.

“You found something?” she asked Naomi, who had called them together.

“Yes,” Naomi turned on a monitor for all of them to see. The screen was filled by the wire with just a bit of insulation still attached.

“So, I used a scanner to magnify it trying to find some trace of what was destroying the insulation.” She pushed a button and the screen zoomed in on the edge of the insulation. The edge was smooth as if it had been sheared off. There was no sign of wear or any tale-tale discoloration.

“I checked several and all of them looked the same. Then I came in here and used the microscopic scanner for a better look.” 

Again, the image on the screen changed, this time to the alien landscape of the microscopic details of the edge of the insulation. This time they could clearly see the damage to the polymer coating.

“It looks like it was chewed,” Holden wondered. “What are we talking about here? Bacteria? Fungus?”

“That’s what I thought,” Naomi agreed. “All of these coatings are soy-based, and we did put down on an alien planet. One with some very aggressive microbial lifeforms.”

“Yeah, and killer slugs,” he groaned.

“And it fits with the point of entry being the airlock,” Nik put in.

“But,” Naomi continued, “there should be organic residue. Mucus, biological byproducts, dead microbes, and others. But these surfaces are clean. There’s not even common dust on them. I scanned over a dozen of them and came up with nothing.”

“Then what the hell is doing this?” Holden said with a frustrated sigh.

Naomi held up a slim hand to stop any further comments, “I did find something, but I can’t identify it.” The screen changed to show a tiny blurred shape moving back and forth.

“What is that?” Holden stepped up to the screen, squinting at the image.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “That’s at max magnification. But watch what happens.”

They watched the screen as the shaped continued to move in jerky motions, going in a tiny circle. After a few cycles, another shape appeared on the screen, going straight to the first one. When it reached the first, both stopped moving, but seemed to shake for a bit. Then both shapes started moving and made their way off the screen in a straight, smooth path. Where they had been was a single pit chewed into the coating.

“What was that?” Amos asked.

“It looked like something was wrong with the first one and the second one fixed it using the material from the coating,” Nik guessed.

“That’s what it looked like to me,” Naomi agreed.

“So, what?” Holden jumped in. “They’re using the coating from the wires to heal themselves?”

“Or make more of themselves,” Nik jumped to the next logical conclusion.

“Reproducing?”

“That is what organisms do, regardless of what planet they’re from.”

Holden turned away and ran a hand through his hair. “What are our options?”

Naomi turned off the monitor before answering. “If the ship in infested, we can’t dock on Medina. We’ll just infect it too.”

“Which means we need to find a way to kill whatever it is,” he concluded.

“Nik, we need to find enough of these things to experiment on,” Naomi looked at her. “Let’s go through all the affected wire you pulled.”

“I’m on in.”

****

The next day, they were no closer to a solution. Despite their best efforts, Nik and Naomi had only found a few of the elusive creatures and every attempt to keep them contained failed. During that time, Naomi told her about the nearly disastrous peacekeeping expedition on New Tera. When she described the microbes that blinded everybody except Holden, Nik stopped her.

“Do you think what we’re dealing with here is from there?” she asked.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“So, what was the cure?”

“The anti-cancer meds that Jim takes.”

Nik was quiet for a moment, thinking. “Can we synthesis enough to aerosolize it throughout the ship?”

“Let me check,” Naomi was already typing on her console.

“Hey, Naomi?” Alex asked over the comm system.

“What is it, Alex?”

“Can you check the air scrubbers? I’m reading a spike in CO2.”

“A spike?”

“Yeah, it’s five percent above norm. Maybe one of the scrubbers is malfunctioning because of our new little buddies?”

“I’ll take a look,” Nik volunteered, pulling up schematics for the system.

****

Sitting on the floor in front of the fourth scrubber, Nik huffed in frustration. Her headache was back with a vengeance and making it hard for her to focus on the task at hand, but she was forcing herself to power through it. Swiping at her running nose with a sleeve, she started putting the panel back together. Only two more to inspect, but if everything stayed consistent, she wasn’t going to find anything. So far, she had come up with nothing. Only the grounding wires were affected and not as bad as some of the other systems on the ship. She used what little wire she had left to make the repairs, but Alex had reported no improvement on the air quality. In fact, it was now reading seven percent above normal.

“Find anything?” Naomi crouched down beside her.

“Nothing that would explain the readings Alex is getting,” Nik grunted as she shoved the tray back in and shut the panel. “How about you?”

“We can synthesize enough of the medication, but it will take us dangerously low for making much more. If we fail and can’t dock with Medina, Jim will run out of it in a few days. I don’t want to take the chance. We need to test it on a smaller sample first.”

Then we need to find some of them to test it on, Nik thought but kept the thought to herself.

“Hey,” Naomi turned her slightly to look at her face. “Your nose is bleeding.”

“Is it?” Nik’s heart fell. 

It must have shown on her face, because Naomi asked, “Nik, what’s wrong?”

She sighed; the others would find out soon enough anyway.

“I have SSAS.”

Naomi looked shocked, “why didn’t you say something? How long have you been feeling ill?”

“It was still just headaches. The nose bleeds just started.”

Severe Space Adaption Syndrome occurred in less than one tenth of a percent of the human population. SAS was first diagnosed in the late twentieth century among astronauts. For most it was similar to a bad case of motion sickness, but as more humans traveled into space throughout the next two centuries, low gravity or lack of gravity has serious effects on a small percent. Dubbed SSAS, the vascular system in individuals that suffered from the condition put more pressure on the vessel walls than they could withstand. First capillaries burst, causing headaches, petechiae, and minor tissue damage throughout the body. Then larger vessels gave way, leading to nose bleeds, subconjunctival hemorrhage, visible bruises, and blood in the lungs. If the individual remained on the float, major arteries would rupture resulting in internal hemorrhage and probable death.

There is no cure for SSAS other than limiting exposure, and only a few treatments to lesson the severity of the symptoms. Pressure chambers can temporarily relieve symptoms, but not reverse them.

“I thought it was why my parents left. I was really sick by the time we reached the station from Mars and it took a long time for me to recover. I didn’t know they had been murdered until Maggie found their death certificates,” she explained. “It’s the reason I never left Tycho station. There was enough rotational gravity there for me.”

“I see,” Naomi stood and reached down to give Nik a hand up. “Let’s get to medical and get you started on a course of meds until we can figure something out.”

“There is nothing to figure out, Sésata. Besides we have bigger problems to worry about.”

“Ya, and we need you at your best to help.”

Nik let the other woman pulled her towards medical.

“Can we please not tell the others?” she asked. “I don’t want them treating me like I’m fragile and will break.”

“I’ll tell Jim, but nobody else, kay?”

“I guess I can live with that.”

In the medical room, she sat in the chair and put her arm in the diagnostic cuff. As Naomi ran tests and had the equipment synthesis a drug regiment, her mind wandered back to the microbes. They needed enough to test their theory on, but the wires that she had replaced already were a bust. They needed to find a large concentration of the invaders. Since they were invisible to the naked eye, how did one go about finding them.

“I have an idea.”

****

It was simple, actually. They knew where the largest concentrations of the microbes had been, so they could predict where they would be next. Working their way back from the airlock, Nik and Naomi followed the trail of destruction until they opened a panel that was only partially touched. Even though Nik had replaced the worst of the damage only a few hours ago, this panel was starting to show signs once more.

“This is it.”

“I’ll go synthesis the cancer meds package them for aerosol disbursement,” Naomi patter her shoulder. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

While she waited, she leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. The meds must have worked because her head wasn’t hurting as much anymore. Still her symptoms were just going to keep getting worse as long as she stayed on the Roci. She needed to get the Mars thing resolved and join her family on Ganymede.

“Hey, you okay?”

She opened her eyes and looked up at Amos.

“Just tired,” she smiled weakly. “It’s been a long day.”

“What’s with the blood?”

She frowned, then looked at the sleeve of the coveralls. There, where she had wiped her nose, was a dark smear of dried blood.

“Just a little nosebleed,” she explained. “No big deal. I used to get them a lot when I was little.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.

He considered her answer and apparently accepted it. “What’s going on?” He nodded towards the open panel.

“Waiting on Naomi. We’re going to test a theory.” She explained their plan.

“Think it will work?”

“I don’t know. We really have no idea what we’re dealing with. Everything we try is just a wild guess.”

He cocked his head slightly and touched his nose. “You missed some.”

“Oh, thanks.” Nik rubbed her nose with her clean sleeve.

“No, you missed it. Here,” he stepped close, putting one big hand on her shoulder to hold her still. With the other hand he reached for her face.

“No, you don’t have to…,”

“Just hold still…,”

“Will you stop…,”

“Got it.”

Nik batted his offending hand away. “Why do you do that?” she huffed.

“Do what?” He seemed genuinely baffled by her question.

“Treat me like a child.”

“You think I treat you like a child?”

“Ya, I do.”

He frowned, “then you don’t know me very well.”

“It’s not like you make it easy, you know,” she retorted. “With this quiet macho thing you do all the time. I can never tell what you’re thinking.”

She saw the muscles in his jaws tense, “you don’t want to know what I’m thinking, Kitten.”

“Maybe I do.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Try me.”

She refused to back down as he stared at her, daring him to share. To open up. But he just shook his head slightly and turned away.

“I didn’t take you for a coward,” she taunted at his back.

So quickly that she didn’t have a chance to react, he spun back around, picking her up by the waist and pinning her to the wall with his body. 

Putting his face so close to hers that their noses almost touched, he bit out, “believe me, you don’t want to know what’s going on in my head.”

His eyes were angry. Finally, something she could read. Meeting his eyes steadily, she said in a calm voice, “I’m not afraid of you. I was at first because you reminded me of that kid I had to space, but now I see. You are not a monster.”

“I am a monster, just like that kid.”

“Maybe once, ya. But that kid couldn’t help himself. He did those things because he enjoyed it. You might have been like that once but being around people like Naomi and Holden has changed you. Now, when you do awful things, it’s for different reasons. You see it as a way to solve a problem, but I don’t think you enjoy it.”

He was quiet, but she could feel the tension in his body as it was pressed against her. If she stopped to think about it, it would be distracting.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she said softly.

She held her breath as she waited for his response. Then his eyes returned to their usually bland expression and he stepped away, lowering her back to the floor until her mag-boots snicked as they locked onto the metal surface.

Caught off-balance by the abrupt change, she didn’t see Naomi step into the corridor.

“Am I interrupting something?”

Thinking quickly, she replied, “Amos noticed the blood on my sleeve and was asking me about it. Can you tell him I’m not a child and can deal with a little bloody nose?”

She shot him a smirk, but he was already gone.

Naomi laughed, “good luck. He can be a little intense at times.”

“Ya, I noticed.”


	27. Chapter 27

Naomi had loaned Nik a set of resistance bands to work out with while they waited for the cancer meds to take effect on the organisms eating the electronics on the ship. She didn’t plan to be on the ship long enough to suffer the effects of zero gravity on her muscle mass, but exercising would give her something to do besides sitting around idly. Maybe it would also take her mind off Amos.

Using her handheld as a guide she went through a series of exercises and started to work up a good sweat. Her shoulder didn’t bother her anymore, but it was definitely weaker than the other and had a more limited range of motion than it did before she dislocated it, so maybe this wasn’t a waste of time after all. She had never been particularly strong, relying more on stealth and speed to survive on the station, and tired quicker than she anticipated. Still she pushed herself a bit longer; she would never get better at something if she gave up when it got difficult.

Speaking of difficult, the exercise did nothing to stop her thoughts about the big welwata. First, what the hell had possessed her to kiss him? When did he stop being someone dangerous to someone she wanted to kiss, even if it was chaste? Nik may have been twenty-four years old, but she could count the people she had kissed, including on the cheek, on one hand minus a few fingers. It just wasn’t something a station rat did. She hadn’t been lying when she admitted to Naomi that she had never been in love. Sure, she had a crush on an older kid when she was twelve or thirteen, but nothing ever came of it. 

Point of fact: she couldn’t say she had ever looked at someone and thought “I want to be with him or her” in THAT way.

So why now was she thinking about how he smelled up close, hot metal and sweat from working on the Roci. She had smelled that combination on countless others, from further away and had never thought it smelled good. But on him, it did. It suited him. Why, when she closed her eyes, could she still picture his with clarity; steel blue irises surrounded by a darker gray ring, brown eyelashes just a shade darker than his brows, and creases in the corners regardless of his expression.

He made her feel things she hadn’t felt before and was at loss how to deal with. She poked at the feelings like they were a stranger passed out in a dark corridor, too skittish to get close enough to be grabbed.

Her hand slipped off the band, letting it snap back into her leg.

“Oww!”

Rubbing the welt, she let herself float freely, despite the warning from Amos. If not for her SSAS, she would love living on a ship like the Roci, the crew her family, working together towards common goals.

“Stop being stupid,” she muttered. The Roci was not her future; Ganymede was. Her family was already there, waiting on her.

After cleaning up, she left her room to check on the microbes, hoping to see signs that the experiment worked.

****

Naomi and Holden were standing in front of the panel already. By the look on their faces, the answer was not what they had hoped for. Peering inside at the wiring, she whistled through her teeth. There indeed was a drastic change, but not for the better. Almost all the visible wires were bare now and it had only been an hour since they had treated the space.

“What now?” she asked the others.

“We need to get a sample of them to test toxins on,” Naomi said flatly.

“We’ll have to move to the next panel, then. Looks like they’re almost done with this one,” she turned to go to the next one in line.

“Hey, folks, we’ve got incoming,” Alex’s voice was staticky and broken over the comm system.

“Great, we’re losing comms,” Holden shook his head in exasperation. “Alex, what’s going on?”

“MCRN frigate closing in on us,” he responded. “They’re hailing us, Hoss.”

“I’ll be right there.”

He turned to Naomi and Nik, “figure this out.”

“We will, Jim. We just need time.”

“We may not have it.”

He gave Naomi a quick kiss and headed for the bridge. Naomi looked at Nik.

“Any other ideas?”

“A few,” Nik answered. “Let’s get us some bugs first.”

****

“Tell me you have good news,” Holden asked them two hours later when they pulled themselves up to the bridge to join him and Alex.

“We figured out how to kill them,” Naomi told him.

“That’s great! How?”

“Massive doses of radiation,” Naomi said glumly as she drifted over to his chair.

A heavy silence descended.

“What about the frigate?” Naomi was the first to speak.

“Well, they’re offering to help us out by nuking us if we don’t hand over Nik in the next hour,” Alex answered with heavy sarcasm.

“That would take care of the problem,” Nik shot him a wry smile.

“Not helping, either of you,” Holden snapped at them, and they lapsed back into silence.

“Ok,” he pinched the bridge of his nose, “one problem at a time. If the MCRN wasn’t breathing down our necks, how would we irradiate the entire ship without everyone on the ship having to take anti-cancer meds for the rest of their lives like me?”

“Put everyone on the shuttle and evacuate. Once we are at a safe distance, remote fire a nuke and detonate it just far enough away not to do any damage, the remotely pilot the Roci through the radiation cloud before it disperses too much. After that, purge the ship then return and fix whatever we fried.”

“There’s no way we could get away with launching a nuke with that frigate nearby. They would assume we were targeting them,” Alex told them.

“And the Roci would be out of commission until we could get any damage caused by the radiation fixed,” Naomi agreed.

“Then that brings us to problem number two: the marines that want to blow us apart,” Holden sighed.

Nik chewed on her lip and waited for a viable option from one of the crew members. The three threw ideas out and discarded them in rapid succession. Finally, Holden threw up his hands in defeat.

“So, we can either wait for life-support to fail or wait for the MCRN to nuke us? Those are not acceptable.”

“I’ll go,” Nik said softly.

“What?”

“No!”

“No, think about it,” she said in a stronger voice. “If I turn myself over to them, they will leave you alone and you can follow through with the plans to destroy the microbes and save the Roci and yourselves.”

“We are not giving you up to them,” Naomi leaned towards her and said slowly. “We will find some other way. We always do.”

“And if we don’t? What happens if we just sit here until complete system failure?” She took a bracing breath and forged ahead, “look, they are looking for something that my parents allegedly stole nearly twenty years ago. I was only four. All I need to do is convince them that I don’t have what they’re looking for. Hell, I don’t even know what they’re looking for!”

“That has to be the dumbest thing I’ve heard anyone say in a long time,” Amos said from behind her. Sometime during the conversation, he had joined them without her being aware. “What’s going to keep them from just throwing you out an airlock when you don’t cough up what they want?”

She planted her hands on her hips, an act that lost its impact when she shifted her weight and one of her mag-boots unlocked and she had to catch herself on a nearby chair to stay upright.

“You don’t know they’ll do that,” she answered when she was done with her wobbly dance.

He snorted, “are you willing to take that chance?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “It’s our only choice right now.”

“Cap, Naomi,” he turned his attention to them, “you can’t seriously be considering this?”

“She has a point, Amos,” Holden answered.

“Jim!” Naomi jerked around to look at him in astonishment.

He held up a hand to stop her next comment, “I think I know a way we can guarantee they don’t harm her.”

“Really? Again?”

He shrugged, “It worked the last two times. Why not this time?”

“Because eventually it isn’t going to work, that’s why. Are you willing to risk Nik’s life?”

“He isn’t. I am,” Nik jumped back into the conversation. 

Holden looked around the bridge, “someone give me an option that doesn’t end with all of us dead.”

When no one answered, he continued, “Alex, contact them and let them know we are sending her over. I’ll take her in the shuttle. Naomi, Amos, you two prep the Roci for evacuation. Nik, meet me at the shuttle airlock in ten minutes.”

Amos’ face was thunderous as he slapped the rail before turning and dropping out of sight without another word of protest.

****

Outside the shuttle airlock, Nik waited for Holden with nervous anticipation. Now that the decision was made and the arguing over, anxiety over what lay in store for her was eating away at her resolve. Her stomach was rolling, making her glad she hadn’t eaten recently. Her hands were shoved into her coverall pockets to stop their shaking and keep her from picking at the line of grime that seemed permanently embedded in the crack on the marble around her neck.

She leaned back against the wall, closed her eyes and took three deep, calming breaths; telling herself everything was going to be just fine.

“Why do you keep doing these things?”

She didn’t bother to open her eyes. “If you’ve come here just to argue with me some more, you might as well just leave. I’m already nervous enough without your help.”

He sighed and leaned against the wall by her side. “They’re going to try to intimidate you first. The person that interrogates you is going to be unpleasant when you don’t tell them what they want to hear right away.”

“I didn’t think it would be easy or fun. I’m not an idiot.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“Ya, you kinda did.”

She got a short laugh in response. After that, neither of them said anything. They let a quiet, calming silence descend. Nik found that her stomach wasn’t rolling so much anymore, and she no longer had to hold onto her thighs inside her pockets to keep her hands from shaking. When Holden came around the corner, that’s how he found them.

“Ready?”

“Ya, let’s get this over with.”

The airlock door hissed as it opened, and Holden ducked in ahead of her. Before she could follow Amos grabbed her by the arm to stop her.

“Be careful.”

“I will. I promise.”

“If shit goes sideways, just do your thing and find a spot to hide.”

“I will,” she repeated looking up at him.

He looked like he was going to say something else, then stopped himself and let her go. She smiled faintly and stepped into the airlock, leaving him behind.


	28. Chapter 28

During the short flight over in the shuttle, Holden told her in more detail what to expect from the interrogation and the ship.

“It is basically a slightly bigger version of the Roci,” he explained as the MCRN Ando grew closer as they approached. “All the system will be similar. The crew is bigger though,” he grinned.

“They are going to ask you the same questions over and over, and worded differently, trying to catch you in a lie.”

“Well, since I’m telling the truth, that won’t be a problem.”

“And don’t lapse into Belter Creole. They might treat you better if you play up the orphaned Martian child angle.”

“Rocinante shuttle, you are instructed to proceed to the aft docking port,” a dispassionate female voice interrupted.

“Understood. Aft docking port,” Holden replied.

“Now,” he turned back to her, “if they won’t return you to the Roci when you’re released, try to get them to take you to Ganymede.”

“But all my stuff is on your ship.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Holden waved off her protest. “We’ll get it to you if it comes to that. If they won’t take you there, just a message to us and we will come to you. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Nervous?”

“Ya.”

“Good.” He leaned in close to look her in the eyes, “stay alert and stay alive, you hear me? I don’t want Amos to tear apart the entire MCRN.”

She snorted, “yeah, right.”

“Oh, he could and would if he chose. Never underestimate him.”

She didn’t respond and just sat quietly while Holden went through the docking sequence with the Ando. Once they were secure, he released the controls and nodded to her.

“Remember this if you forget everything else: we aren’t going to abandon you. Ever.”

“Thanks, Captain,” she said, meaning it.

He gave her a smile that once again transformed his face, “I think you can call me Jim.”

“Thank you, Jim.”

****

Nik was met at the airlock by a security detail that immediately escorted her to a holding cell to wait. As they made their way through the Ando, she saw that it was indeed just a larger version of the Roci. That would come in handy in an emergency. Not that she expected one. She hoped not anyway.

After an indeterminable period of time, the security detail escorted her to another room; dark with just a single table and two chairs. One of her guards told her to sit and, once she complied, the three men arranged themselves in a line behind her. Again, she waited. Holden, no, Jim, had warned her about this tactic. Intended to put her on edge and stress her out even more. Determined not to let their games get to her, she leaned forward to rest her head on her forearms on the table and shut her eyes. She hadn’t slept for a while and was tired, so what better way to pass the time than to take a quick nap?

She was jerked out of her nap when the door slid open with a hiss and a short woman in an immaculate uniform entered the room. She strode around the table and scowled at Nik.

“What kind of game are you playing?”

Confused, Nik replied, “I was just taking a quick nap.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” the woman snapped. “Have you made a deal with the UN?”

“The UN? Lady, I have no idea what you are talking about,” she said with a sigh. She hadn’t expected them to start off this intense.

“That’s Captain, Captain Asha Catedral,” the woman corrected. “Are you telling me you are so stupid that you don’t know James Holden is the UN’s lapdog?”

“I didn’t make any deal with him or the UN. I just ended up on his ship after what happened at Tycho station.”

“You didn’t make a deal with him? Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” she was certain.

“Then how do you explain this?” The woman gestured at the screen on the wall with her handheld and Jim’s face filled the screen.

“This is James Holden of the Rocinante…,” he was saying. He went on to say that she, Nik, had turned herself willingly over to the MCRN in order to clear up a misunderstanding concerning her parents that happened twenty years ago. He went on to explain that the MCRN had been searching for her like she was a fugitive and had threatened them with the use of nuclear missiles.

“Niki Bordini went to them willingly and in good faith to clear up the issue. If something happens to her while she is under their protection, the entire system will know that the MCRN and by extension, Mars, do not operate in good faith and cannot be trusted to keep their word. This is James Holden, I and the rest of the system will be watching you, Captain Catedral.”

The captain was furious, but Nik laughed when the feed ended. Jim was just doing what he was best at, poking the enemy in front of all humanity and daring it to strike him back. She sure as hell hoped it didn’t backfire on her this time.

“You think this is funny, Ms Bordini?” If the captain scowled any deeper, the sides of her face might slide off.

“Ya, kind of.”

The captain looked over her head at the men standing behind her, “take her back to the holding cell.” Then she stormed out of the room.

“That went well, don’t you think?” she asked the guards as she stood to leave. She could have sworn she saw the mouth of one of them twitch like he was stifling a smile.

****

She wasn’t sure how long she was left in the cell this time, but she had been served three meals while she waited and slept off and on strapped to the hard bench against the wall. She had slept is worst conditions on the Tycho, so it didn’t bother her as much as the bright overhead lights that never dimmed. 

She would guess she had been on the Ando for over twenty-four hours, because her headache was back. While on the MCRN ship, she had missed her second dose of meds to combat her SSAD. Her symptoms would keep getting worse if she didn’t get back to the Roci soon or convince her captors to provide the meds. She doubted they would, but it was worth a try.

This time when she was escorted from the cell to the dark room, she didn’t have to wait long before the door slid open for a slender man to enter. Sitting in the chair opposite her, he nodded to the guards to leave the room. Then he pulled out a small case, took out a pill and broke it between his teeth. When he looked at her a second time, his eyes were dilated to the extent that the light brown of his irises were merely a ring around his large black pupils. Holden had told her about his too.

“Tell me, Ms Bordini, or may I call you Niki?” he cocked his head slightly in question.

“I go by Nik.”

“Tell me, Niki,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “how much is the UN paying you?”

“They aren’t paying me anything.”

“So, you’re just giving them the research your traitorous parents stole from my government?”

“No, I’m not giving them anything. I don’t have anything to give them.”

“Then you’re hiding it somewhere? Did you hide it on Vesta during your stay there?”

“No, I don’t have anything to hide. I have no idea what you think I have.” Despite being warned about this, she was still feeling irritated by it. Maybe it was her headache.

“If you don’t have anything to hide, why did you run?”

“I didn’t run. I was rescued by the crew of the Rocinante and they took the other Belters they rescued to Vesta. I was just along for the ride.”

“But you did run, Niki,” he leaned forward as if he had caught her in a lie. “The moment you heard we were on our way to Vesta, you fled.”

“No, we dropped off the Belters, then Captain Holden was going to take me to Ganymede to be with my family there.”

“Ah, your family,” he gave her an oily smile. “The children, Luyne Yeu and Sean Byrne, and the woman, Maggie Johnston. You consider them your family?”

“Yes, I do.”

“What about your real family? Did you know you have family on Mars?”

She started at the revelation.

“No? How could you not know this?”

“Maybe because I just recently found out my name was Bordini and I was born on Mars?”

“Do you seriously expect me to believe you spent twenty years on the Tycho and never once tried to find out who you were?”

“I really don’t care what you believe,” she snapped.

Again, he smiled disturbingly, “If you weren’t running, why did the Rocinante go silent after it left Tycho station?”

Caught off-guard by his unexpected change of topic, she struggled for a moment to answer.

“Who knows why Captain Holden does anything?” It was a weak answer, but it was the best she could come up with.

“If you didn’t make a deal with the UN, why did Holden send a transmission to the Secretary General of the UN?”

Around and around they went for the next hour. By the time her interrogator called an end to the session Nik’s head was pounding and she was having trouble concentrating. The good news is that she managed to stick to the story. The only untruth she told was about why they ran quiet on the way to Vesta. He kept circling back to that point over and over, but she didn’t waiver. Still, she was sure she had done nothing to convince him that she had nothing to hide.

Before the door to the holding cell closed between her and the guards, she stopped one of them.

“Can you ask someone about getting me some medication for my SSAS?”

“I can’t promise anything, but I will relay your question to the watch commander,” he told her.

“Thank you.”

Exhausted, she crossed to the bench, lowering herself to it and tried to get some more rest.

****

Three meals later, she was back in the interrogation room. No medicine had been forthcoming to relieve her symptoms and her headache was still pounding at the inside of her skull. Her nose had started bleeding again and she had an annoying ringing in her right ear.

“You’re not looking too good, Niki,” her interrogator stared down at her. “I hear you have SSAS. I hear it’s a painful condition.”

She glared up at him with bleary eyes, “It’s a blast. I recommend everyone try it.”

“Glad to see you still have a sense of humor,” he said as he sat down and pulled out the pill box. “Shall we get started?”

****

Nik lay listlessly on the bench, her eyes open but not focused on anything in particular. Her last session with the Lieutenant, she had finally figured out his rank, had been a repeat of the first: the same questions again and again. She felt that she was getting nowhere. Maybe this was a giant mistake. She owed Amos an apology. If she ever saw him again. The thought of not seeing him again made her chest tighten inexplicably.

Another meal of tasteless food was delivered, and she ate it automatically. Apparently, the Martians weren’t going to let her starve, but they didn’t seem to care about her SSAS symptoms.

She was about to drift off to sleep again when the door slid open to admit an older man in a rumpled uniform.

“Hi, young lady, I’m Dr. Tinsley,” he introduced himself and he crossed to her and squatted. “Oh,” he tutted, “you’re not doing well, are you?”

The sleeve of her coveralls was red with the blood she had been wiping from her nose. With no gravity, it didn’t drip; instead it pooled inside her sinuses until she couldn’t breath and had to blow it out. The only thing she had available was her sleeve. She supposed she could have just blown it out into the room and let the droplets hang in the air, but that seemed a little gross.

“It’s SSAS,” she told him, unbuckling the strap that held her in place and sitting up to face him with some dignity.

“So, I was told,” he nodded. “I’m going to take you to the med bay and run a full diagnostic on you, but this should help you a little.”

He pulled out a compact injector and gestured at her arm. Pulling up her sleeve, she allowed him to administer the drug. The hammering pain in her head dulled almost immediately, but the ringing in her ear persisted.

“Better?”

“Ya, taki,” she replied, slipping back into creole without thinking.

The doctor frowned slightly but held out his hand to help her get up, “let’s get you to the med bay and get you cleaned up. Maybe some fresh clothes?”

Nik accepted his assistance and followed him from the cell. She noticed that her guard detail had been reduced to just one marine. Maybe they no longer thought she was a threat, which meant she might be getting through to them. Maybe.

In the medical bay, brighter and larger than the one on the Roci, the doctor helped her into a chair, and she slipped her arm into the diagnostic cuff. Her single guard didn’t enter but posted outside the door to prevent her escape.

“They aren’t very pleased with you right now,” Dr. Tinsley said conversationally as he ran the machine. “Things would go easier on you if you just told them what they wanted to know.”

“I can’t tell them what I don’t know,” she let her head flop back in frustration. “If they gave me a clue what they were even looking for, maybe I might remember something. But all they keep saying is ‘research’. All I know is they were on the terraforming project. But so is almost everyone that lives on Mars, so that’s no help.”

“I can see your point,” he hummed a bit as he read the display. “You have some minor aneurysms, but they can be taken care of easily. Your blood sugar is low, though. This should help.” He pushed a button and the cuff hissed as it injected something into her arm.

“I eat what they give me,” she closed her eyes for a moment.

“Hey, don’t fall asleep just yet,” he chided her. “I might have some information that could help you.”

That got her attention, “what?”

He lowered his voice so that she had to strain to hear it over the hum of the ship and equipment in the room, “picobots.”

She scrunched her face up, “what?”

“They were developing picobots for the project. You know, super-tiny robots.”

“I know what picobots are,” she huffed. “And I know there are no such thing. Nobody has been able to construct one that could reliably take the programming. That’s been the hold up for decades.”

“I’m telling you they succeeded.”

That made no sense at all. “Look, if what you say is true, what do picobots have to do with terraforming on Mars?”

“Everything. You know the project is supposed to take over a hundred years and most of the people working on it will never see it complete? Well, these bots could speed that up to just a few decades. They were programmed to breakdown inert organic material and convert it into CO2, a greenhouse gas. Swarms of the bots could do what millions of people couldn’t do: create an atmosphere conductive to the growth of plant life on the surface of the planet.”

“Where do my parents come in?”

“They were on the project. Your father, a microbiologist, your mother, one of the foremost programmers in the system, and my sister, a seismologist specializing in the role geology plays in the formation of life on prehistoric earth. They were all on the project. And they were the first to realize the danger.”

What he was telling her was overwhelming and more than a little alarming, but something didn’t seem right about his story. Something was tickling the back of her brain and she wished she was better rested and had a clearer head. She didn’t like the feeling of sluggishness her thoughts had at the moment, like each impulse from the neurons in her brain had to swim through viscous fluid to reach the surface. Something was off, that was certain.

“What did you give me?”

“Nothing bad, I assure you. Just something to help you relax.”

Behind him, the lights on a panel seemed to dance. Flickering like multicolored stars, they rose from the panel and circled the room over her head.

“The lights…,” she started to say.

“Nik,” Dr. Tinsley snapped a finger in front of her face, bringing her focus back to him. Why hadn’t she noticed before now that his eyes twinkled with the same lights? She reached out to touch them but found she couldn’t move her arm. She looked down at it with a frown and saw that it was strapped to the arm of the chair.

“Why is my arm strapped?” her speech was slow and slurred.

“Huh, maybe I administered a bit too much,” he mused and tapped the side of her face. “Can you feel that? No?” He pushed a few buttons and there was another hiss from the cuff. “Let’s try this.”

The lethargy dissipated, but the fuzzy feeling in her head and the winking lights remained, still she felt more like herself.

“Better,” she didn’t slur as much.

“Good,” the doctor smiled broadly. “Shall we continue?”

Continue what? She wondered. Her confusion must have shown.

“You were telling me who your parents gave the stolen prototypes to.”

She was? No, that wasn’t possible. She didn’t know anything. Or did she?

“Come on, Nik, think. It would have been small enough to easily conceal but robust enough to hold the picobots safely. A containment tube about this big, perhaps?” He indicated the size and shape with his hands.

“No,” she said frowning. “I don’t remember anything like that.”

“Did they meet with anyone?”

She thought about it, but her parents never let anyone into their rooms because she was so sick at the time. The only time she ever left the rooms was to go to medical.

She must have said at least some of her thoughts out loud because the doctor leaned back with a long sigh. Then he spoke into his hand held.

“She really doesn’t know anything. This was a waste of our time, Captain.”

As he stood, he pushed yet another button and the cuff hissed.

“Why don’t you get some sleep,” he told her distractedly before he left the room. 

Before the door closed behind him, Nik’s eyes were already closed as her awareness faded.


	29. Chapter 29

She wasn’t sure how long she was out before her contingent of guards came to collect her. Returning to her cell, she paced back and forth, running what she remembered of the doctor’s interrogation over and over in her mind. Why? Why were they so sure she had the picobots? She combed through every memory, however faint from her time with her parents before their deaths, but nowhere was a containment tube as described by the doctor. She was familiar with the ones used by medical; they ended up in the recycled waste often enough.

At least her headache and nosebleed were gone she thought gratefully as she absently fiddled with the marble around her neck. The crack in it was so fine, she could only feel it when she scraped her fingernail against it. Again, she stopped herself. She didn’t want to damage the only thing she had from her parents even more. Sighing, she dropped it and sat down on the bench. Raising her hand to brush her hair out of her face, she stopped to examine the line of grime along the nail that she had used. Light grey and barely visible, it faded away as she watched it.

“Sabak,” she whispered, going pale.

Her hands shook as she pulled the cord from around her neck roughly and tossed it on the bench before scooting as far away from it as she could. 

Her mind raced as the pieces of the puzzle suddenly snapped together. She didn’t want to believe it, but she had learned to go with her instincts, and everything suddenly made sense. Why the MCRN couldn’t find the research. Why Lilly-Ann had given her the marble, telling her it was from her mother. The ravaged electrical system on the Roci. Why the microbes didn’t respond to anything they tried except radiation.

The bauble was not a marble; it was the containment vessel for the picobots. 

The MCRN had been right; they have been with her all this time and she never realized it, only they had been looking for a containment tube, not a small unremarkable gray marble. What her parents had intended to do with it was not clear, nor was what Lilly-Ann had planned, but clearly, she hadn’t intended to leave it in the hands of a four-year-old. She had told Nik to hide and had tried to lead whoever was chasing them away. Only, she was caught. While she may have told them that Nik had the bots, she didn’t tell them about the marble. She just let them assume the bots were in a tube. When she had been murdered, and Nik disappeared into the depths of the station with the other orphans, the bots had disappeared. Lost. Until she popped back up when she filed for an ID. And the MCRN had come looking for their property.

She had carried it around with her for almost twenty years, safely contained inside the marble. At least until she had cracked it in the airlock. Then the Roci had been infected. And probably the Ando too. Lucky for them it would take hours, maybe days for them to start noticing small glitches. Too bad it couldn’t be sped along.

Or could it. 

Nik smiled and scooted back over to the marble. Picking it up, she whispered to it, “I hope you guys are still hungry, because I have a feast for you.”

She hesitated before putting it back on but reasoned that she had been carrying it this whole time and they hadn’t done anything to her. She just hoped there were enough of them left in the orb to do some damage. Fast. Instead of pulling it over her head to hang around her neck, she wrapped the cord around her right wrist, letting it dangle enough to grab.

Going to the door, she yelled through it at the posted guard until he opened the door to find out what she wanted. She told him to let the doctor know that she had remembered something. Then she waited. Between her cell and the interrogation room was a major communications relay panel. That would be the best place for her to release the bots. All she had to do was get them to take her to the room.

When the door opened a few minutes later, she was ushered out quickly. Instead of turning to the left to go to the interrogation room, they turned right, and her heart dropped. She would have to find a different place to unleash the ravenous horde. Then, she realized where they were going: the bridge. There were so many choices up there, it was just a matter of opportunity. She could barely control her grin.

Captain Catedral turned to greet her with a frown, “I was told you have some new information?”

“Yes,” Nik replied and told her about Lilly-Ann checking her out of the med bay and everything that transpired afterwards, leaving out the marble.

Catedral waved her hand dismissingly, “I already know all this. Tell me something useful.”

That stopped Nik cold.

“You already know? How?”

“It doesn’t matter. Take her back,” she told the guards.

“You killed them, didn’t you?”

“Of course not, silly child,” Catedral told her scornfully.

“No, not you. The MCRN. Mars killed my parents and Lilly-Ann. You’re all a bunch of murderers!” she yelled and lunged at the captain.

The captain shoved her roughly aside, and she stumbled on the grating and caught herself on the edge of the weapons console.

“Get this child off my bridge,” Catedral snapped at the guards.

As they grabbed her and forcibly removed her from the bridge, Nik hid her smile and palmed the fragment of the marble still hanging from the cord.

****

Back in her cell, Nik checked the remains of the marble. Just a sliver remained, with just a faint grey tint that was rapidly fading. Soon the glass was perfectly clear. The sharp sliver of glass could prove useful during her escape, so she left it on the cord and let it remain around her wrist. Then she lay down on the bench and took a nap. She slept better than she had since she stepped foot on the Ando.

Two meals later, the door to her cell slid open to admit the captain and doctor.

“What have you done? Where is it?” Catedral demanded, her pale face flushed red.

Nik smiled. The game was over, no need to hide anymore.   
“Probably everywhere by now.”

“You released them on my ship. How?”

Nik held up her wrist where the remnant of the marble hung, “you were looking for the wrong thing. They were with me this whole time on my necklace. Thing is, I would have never known if it hadn’t been for you guys. You wanted them so badly, now you have them. Nakangepensa.”

The doctor stepped forward and slapped her hard, causing her to cling to him to keep from falling to the floor.

“You little bitch! If we die, so do you.”

Nik wiped the blood from her split lip on her sleeve, “were you going to let me live anyway?”

He gave a short laugh, “you were going to have an unfortunate accident while trying to escape.”

“Shut up, Tinsley,” Catedral told him harshly. “Guards!”

The two guards stepped into the room. Turning away from Nik, the captain told them, “this prisoner has sabotaged the Ando. Shove her out an airlock.”

Before she could leave Nik to her fate, the overhead light went out and the red emergency light illuminated. Alarm claxons sounded.

“General quarters. General quarters. All hands report to your battle stations.”

Catedral pulled out her handheld, “LT, what’s going on?”

“Weapons are down, Captain, and the electrical system is failing from amidship to all forward compartments.”

“On my way,” she snapped. “Tinsley get to medical. You two, don’t let her out of this room under any circumstances.”

After they left and Nik was alone in the dim red light, she pulled the doctor’s handheld out of her pocket.

“Dédawang da ting mi ando showxa ere,” she grinned and opened a channel to the Roci.

****

“Nik! To séfesowng ke?” Naomi’s worried voice was broken by static but understandable.

“Mi gut,” Nik assured her. “Naomi, they’re not microbes, they’re picobots!”

“That explains a lot, but it doesn’t matter now, we got rid of them.”

Nik breathed a sigh of relief, “good. How’re the repairs going?”

“Not complete, but a lot will have to wait till we dock. All the important systems are working, though, and  
we're following the Ando now. What’s going on? They’re not answering our hails.”

“They’re having the same problem that the Roci had, only worse.”

“How is that possible?” The transmission was breaking up. Only part of her words came through, but it was enough for Nik to understand.

“I don’t have time to explain right now. I just need you guys to come get me if you can.”

“How are you going to get off the Ando?”

“I’m still working on it, give me time. I just need you close when I do. Wait for my signal, kay?”

“Stay safe, sésata.”

“You too.”

After that, there was nothing left to do but waiting and plan.

****

Her next meal still had not arrived when the red lights began to flicker. Getting up and going to the door of her cell, Nik touched the control panel to open the door. It slid open a few inches then stopped, with a red ERROR flashing on the panel. Her little friends had done their job.

When one of her guards didn’t appear, she called out, “hey! Anyone there?”

She waited for an answer, not really expecting any, before pushing the door open enough to squeeze through. The corridor was empty and eerily silent. The normal noises of a spaceship were absent except for an irregular ping from the ventilation duct overhead. The emergency lighting flickered in and out sporadically making the shadows shift in an unsettling fashion. 

Staying as close to the wall as possible to stay in those shadows, Nik crept down the corridor towards the aft of the ship where she knew the cargo and shuttle bays were located. Feeling exposed and vulnerable, she looked for an access panel to the crawl space under the floor. Twice she froze, her heart racing in panic, when she heard voices, but nobody stepped into the corridor with her.

Spying a panel, she quickly pried it loose and peered into the cavity below. Her spirits fell when she saw that most of the wires were bare, the bots having thoroughly stripped them of their protective layer of insulation. With a sigh, she quietly replaced the panel. There was no way she was going to be able to use the crawl space without getting herself electrocuted.

Again, she heard voices approaching and this time, they didn't stop. Looking around in desperation, she saw that she was near the medical bay and dashed to the door. Pushing it open enough to slip through, she looked about for somewhere to hide in the gloom.

“What the hell?” Tinsley's voice rang out from the corner and he stepped into the red glow of an emergency light. “What are you doing out of your cell?”

Looking for something to use as a weapon, she responded to buy herself some time, “this ship is dying.”

“Because of you,” he snarled. “My sister died trying to destroy those bots and you just turned them loose without a thought.”

Sister? Suddenly another piece of the puzzle snapped into place. “Lilly-Ann was your sister?”

“Yes, she was working with your parents to keep the technology out of human hands.”

“Why?”

On the other side of the treatment chair nearest her was a tray with a few instruments laying haphazardly on it, including a laser scalpel. Trying not to be obvious, she backed away from the doctor and closer to it.

“Think, girl! Use that mind you inherited from your parents. Look around you at what they have done in less that a day.” He waved his hands, “think about what these things would do to a space station in the belt. Or a city under a dome on Mars or Luna.”

“But they were designed to speed up teraforming, not this.”

He shook his head and laughed bitterly, “since when has mankind used anything strictly for what it was intended? How long do you think it would have taken the MCRN to figure out they could be used as a weapon? How long do you think it would be before the UN or Belters got their hands on the technology?”

A chill ran up her spine at the implications. Just the tiny few stored in her marble all these years had brought the two ships to their knees in a matter of hours. What would a large quantity do to a space station like Tycho with thousands living on it?

Her horror must have shown on her face because Tinsley nodded, “now you understand.”

“Is there anyway to destroy them besides radiation?”

He shrugged, “not that I know of. Your parents and Lilly-Ann were trying to find a way, but I don't know how far they got before...,” his voice trailed off.

Nik was going to respond, but was cut off by crackle of static from the comm panel. Holden's image dances erratically on the screen.

“Captain, you... to irradiate... ship... crew off...”

Tinsley stepped over to the panel and turned it off. “He's been pleading with Asha for the last hour to get her crew off the ship and irradiate it with a nuke blast to kill the little bastards.”

“Why hasn't she done so?”

“She thinks it's a trick. That he will come in and take over her ship once we evacuate.”

“That's bullshit,” Nik snorted. “Holden isn't that sort of person.”

“You and I know that, but she's hardcore MCRN. She thinks he's just another belt sympathizer and possibly a terrorist. There's no way she's going to evacuate her ship with him anywhere near.”

“Then we have to get off this ship before it's too late.”

He shook his head, “it's already too late. The moment you released those bots we were doomed. If we leave this ship now, there's the possibility that we are carrying a few on us and we'll infect any ship, station, or planet we step foot on.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, “no, better for us to die on this ship than that.”

Nik froze in horror. “Vesta,” she whispered.

The doctor wasn't paying attention to her anymore, he had collapsed into a chair with his head in his hands. Nik skirted the end of the med-chair and grabbed the laser scalpel, sliding it into a pocket.

“Doc,” she moved away from the tray and towards him. “Doc!”

“What?” he looked up at her with bleary eyes.

“This isn't the only place I've exposed to the bots.”

He sat up straighter, “what?”

Quickly she told him about cracking the marble on the Roci and then going to Vesta. 

“We've got to warn them,” she ended.

“How? Our comms and engines are down.”

“What about the shuttle? It's systems are separate from the Ando. Maybe it can still fly?”

The door was shoved open behind her, startling both of them.

“What is this? What are you doing out of your cell?” Captain Asha demanded as she entered the room.

“Captain,” Tinsley stood and stepped up to stand beside Nik, “we've got to get word to Vesta station. It's been infected with the bots. We've got to warn them before it's too late.”

Asha's lip curled in a sneer, “I don't give a damn about Vesta station. It's full of belter trash like her.” She raised her weapon and pointed it at Nik. “You killed us, you bitch.”

Before she fired, Tinsley pushed Nik to the side and leaped at her, causing her shot to go wide.

“Go!” he yelled at Nik as he grappled with his captain.

“Traitor! I'll see you executed for this,” Asha grunted and tried to raise her weapon to fire another shot.

Nik started towards the door, then paused, unable to leave the doctor to his own defenses against his captain. Remembering in the laser scalpel in her pocket, she palmed it and circled around the two, looking for an opening. Though Tinsley was taller and heavier than her, Asha was in better shape and obviously trained for hand to hand combat. She had already pushed him deeper into the room and against a med-chair.

When Asha swept his legs, he fell back over the chair with her weight on his upper body and released his grip on the weapon as he struggled not to flip over. As she raised the weapon with a triumphant grin, Nik saw her chance. Silently, she darted forward and stabbed the scalpel into Asha's exposed neck. Surprised, the captain spun towards her and fired the weapon wildly as she fell. The shot shattered an overhead light fixture and shards of hot polymer rained down on Nik. The smell of burnt electrical components and hair filled the room.

Slapping at some of the smoldering pieces that landing on her clothed, Nik looked at Tinsley, “let's get to that shuttle before someone comes looking for her.”

Tinsley just nodded, stepped over the body of his captain, and followed her out the door.

The short trip to the shuttle bay was tense as they encountered several crew members. But either they were too concerned about their duties to pay any attention to the pair, or the presence of the ship's doctor reassured them that nothing was amiss. When they reached the doors to the bay, Nik sagged against the wall in relief while Tinsley pushed open the door with a grunt.

Slipping through behind him, Nik almost ran into his back in the dimly lit space. As with the rest of the Ando, here all the lights were out and the emergency lights flickered off and on randomly.

“What's wrong? Why did you stop?” she asked, stepping around him, only to come to a stop herself.

“Well, hell.”

The shuttle bay was empty.


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started writing this story, I didn't give a lot of thought about when it fit into the timeline of the series or the books, but now with season 5 airing, I feel I need to. For those of you wonderful readers that have read the books, you know there is a significant time gap between books 6 & 7\. I believe this story best fits somewhere early in that gap. I hope this helps those of you that need to know where it fits in.
> 
> Thank you for all your support!
> 
> *****

“Now what?” she asked Tinsley. “This was the only plan I had.”

Tinsley just looked out at the empty bay. Nik grabbed his arm and shook it to bring his focus back to her.

“The Roci is out there waiting, I've just got to get to them somehow.” She thought about it for a moment, “how far can someone go in spacesuit?”

The Doctor frowned, “the suit is only limited by its air supply. The thrusters only have a short lifespan, but you only need them for maneuvering once you get going. And slowing down once you get there.”

She chewed her lip, thinking, “so you're saying I could make it to the Roci from here as long as my air doesn't run out?”

“Well, that and you need to know where they are, which is impossible with all the systems down.”

“But if I could see them?”

Tinsley shook his head with a smile, “you haven't been out here much, have you?”

“No. Why?”

“Because distances out here are deceiving. On the scanner, the Roci could be so close that the icons overlap each other, but we are talking hundreds, sometimes thousands of kilometers, separating them. At a hundred clicks, the Roci would be invisible to the naked eye. Especially if you didn't know where to even look for her.”

Deflated, she sighed, “do you have any better ideas?”

“Let me think a moment.”

Nik left his side to explore the bay. The locker with spacesuits was open and the three suits that were left floated in the space above it like puppets. The small-arms locker was also open, but empty. Debris floated in the air throughout the bay. Someone had ransacked the place before taking the shuttle.

Nik giggled. The whole thing reminded her of a kid's toy that Maggie had in her collection. A miniature scene from earth inside a globe filled with liquid. When shaken, tiny bits of glitter floated around the scene. Maggie called it a snow-globe.

Once she started giggling, she couldn't stop. Soon she was laughing so hard her sides hurt and tears pooled on her cheeks, held to her skin by the cohesion of the liquid. Starting to feel light-headed, she tried to stop the laughter and found it difficult.

“Doc?” she called out, hick-upping.

When Tinsley didn't answer, she turned to look for him. He was in the middle of the bay, playing absently with a floating piece of debris. That sobered her up immediately. He was supposed to be coming up with a plan.

“Doc?” she called again and walked over to him. Despite the end of her giggling fit, she still felt light-headed.

Knocking the debris away that was occupying him, she stood in front of him.

“Doc? Something's not right.”

He looked down at her blankly, then frowned as understanding came to him.

“It's the air. The bots convert non-living organic material into CO2. Plus, I think the scrubbers are off-line. The oxygen in the air has dropped low enough to start causing cognitive dysfunction.” 

In short, they were out of time, Nik thought. One of the suits bobbing in the air caught her eye and she had an idea.

“Come on,” she tugged at Tinsley's arm to pull him over to the locker. “Grab a suit and put it on.”

“These aren't going to solve the problem,” he protested.

“No, but we can think better if we're breathing good air,” she told him as she grabbed on and proceeded to put it on.

Tinsley stopped arguing and followed suit. Soon, both were suited up and Nik's head cleared up as she breathed in the suit's air. But the Doctor had been right, these suits wouldn't solve the problem and they were using up the air in them while they came up with a plan.

Think, Nik, think. She thought. The Ando was almost identical to the Roci so she racked her brain about the Roci's systems. What backups did the ships have for comms? Everything on the two ships were routed to the comm array outside on the hull. There was an emergency comm panel mounted on the array with its own power source, but it was tied in electrically with the rest of the system. If the Bots had destroyed the wiring for the system, there was no reason to doubt that panel was also useless.

But....

She pulled out her handheld and pulled up the last schematic she had loaded for the Roci's comm system.

“Yes!” she did a little jump of excitement.

“What?”

She showed him the schematic.

“What am I looking at?”

“There's a port on the antenna where you can plug in an auxiliary unit. If I can connect the comm unit from my suit to the antenna and use its power for the transmission, then I can talk to the Roci. I can get them to come closer and we can use our suits to go to them.”

Tinsley shook his head, “that doesn't change the fact that we're contaminated and could be carrying bots on us. We can't risk it.”

He was right. The crew of the Roci had already evacuated their ship, their home, once to purge it of the bots she had brought onboard. She couldn't recontaminate it.

“I still need to tell them about Vesta so they can warn the station.”

“What do you need?”

****

Ten minutes later, she was outside the Ando making her way towards the comm array. This was the first time she had been outside without Amos at her side and she desperately missed his presence. She was saddened that she wouldn't get to see him again, or any of them. She pushed that maudlin thought aside. She didn't have time for pity; she had a job to do.

Tinsley had been right. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't see the Roci. The power needed for the transmission would practically drain her suit and it wouldn't be very strong, but the calculations on her handheld assured her that, if the other ship was within a thousand clicks, her signal would get to them.

Climbing up the support to the access the antenna was difficult in the spacesuit. Whoever had designed these ships hadn't taken that into consideration. Or maybe they just thought no one would ever have to. Either way, the two-meter climb was awkward, but after a couple false starts and nearly falling off it once, Nik reached the platform where the antenna was mounted and the emergency comm panel.

Using the tools she brought, she opened the panel on the off-chance that the bots had spared it, but no, she sighed, the wires inside were just as bare as the ones throughout the rest of the ship. Releasing the panel to let it float away, she pulled out the jumper she had fashioned ahead of time, opened the small panel on the arm of her suit, and clipped the jumper to the contacts. Next, she located the port at the base of the antenna. Prying the port free of the assembly, she clipped the other end of the jumper to the two bare wires extending from the port into the antenna.

“Here we go,” she said quietly as she opened a channel.

“Rocinante, this is Nik. Do you copy?”

She waited five very long seconds before trying again.

“Rocinante, this is Nik. Can you hear me?”

The seconds ticked by.

“Niki girl!” the excited voice of Alex couldn't be disguised by the static over the channel. “We were worried about you.”

“It's good to hear your voice Alex,” she smiled to herself. “But I don't have a lot of power.”

Another voice came over the channel, “Nik, are you alright?” Naomi asked.

“I don't have a lot of time. You need to know that Vesta has been infected by the bots too. That's where it started. You need to warn them.”

“Right,” Naomi answered. “As soon as we get you, we'll be on our way.”

“I can't come back, Naomi. I'm contaminated. I would just bring bots back onto the Roci and you'd be back where we started with this mess.”

“No, we figured it out. How to detect them and get rid of small batches of them. We can decontaminate you before they have a chance to get back into our systems.”

That was the best news Nik had heard in days, possibly weeks. She found herself grinning like a fool inside her helmet.

“Then come get me,” she told Naomi.

“When we get closer, we'll send the shuttle. We can't dock, so you will have to come to us.”

“Hurry, then,” Nik urged, “the air on the Ando is toxic and we only have three suits.”

“Nik? Nik? Are you still there?”

“I'm still here,” she answered. “Can you hear me?”

“Nik? Alex, she's gone. Can you get her back?”

Nik looked down at her comm unit. It was completely dark. She had used up all the power it had. She had to hope it was enough.

“Shit,” she muttered. She didn't tell them about the doctor.

****

Back in the shuttle bay, she told Tinsley the good news, but he didn't seem as excited by it as she was.

“Didn't you hear me? We're going to be alright.”

“Yes, I heard you. And so did anyone else onboard that was in a suit.”

“Felota,” she breathed as the implication hit her.

“If that means what I think it does, yeah,” he agreed.

One of her friends was blindly flying a shuttle to a ship full of people that were not only desperate, but also thought of them as the enemy. With the visor darkened, there would be no way to tell it wasn't her approaching until it was too late.

“Once they get close, they'll be able to pick up the signals from the comm units of the suits. We can warn them.”

“Your suit is dead. You can't warn anyone.”

“There is a third suit,” she turned to find it, only to come up short.

Behind them were several crew members, spread out between her and the exit. All of them with weapons drawn and pointed at her and the doctor.

“I should have known you'd turn on your own,” one of them sneered over the channel. A shudder ran through Nik as she recognized the voice of her interrogator. “Like sister, like brother.”

Tinsley straightened at the insult, “Lilly-Anne was trying to save the system from Martian arrogance.”

Only then did Nik make the connection. The last piece of the puzzle fell into place. With her co-conspirators dead and being pursued by the Martians, Lilly-Anne had hidden Nik and the prototype bots to keep them safe while she led the Martians away only to be caught by them anyway. Despite being tortured, she hadn't given away Nik's location or anything about the bots. Her actions had probably saved Nik's life.

The comm-link on one of the crew member's suit beeped, drawing her attention back to the current crisis.

“Sir, the reactor's containment is failing.”

The lieutenant turned slightly towards the speaker, “how long?”

“Maybe fifteen minutes. Possibly less.”

“Then it's a good thing Holden is bringing the Tachi to us.” He turned back to Nik and Tinsley, “shoot them and prepare to abandon ship.”

As three of the crew members raised their weapons, Tinsley spun and slapped the airlock controls. Blocking her with his body, he shoved her through, taking the first shot in the back.

“Go!” he grunted and keyed in the sequence for an emergency decompression of the airlock.

Nik could only watch helplessly as the doctor fell forward against the airlock door and slumped to the floor as more shots were fired into him. A slight hiss was the only warning she had before the airlock opened and she was violently sucked out and flung into the void of space.

She struggled to control her breathing and not panic.

Think, Niki girl, she thought to herself in silent imitation of Maggie. As the distance between her and the Ando grew, she needed to turn so she could try to spot the Roci or its shuttle. She had no power for comms or thruster control, so what did that leave her to work with? Keenly aware that the slightest movements had exaggerated effects, she twisted her body slightly in the direction she needed to turn. Her time spent on the float on the Roci paid off as her body rotated slowly away from the Ando and outwards. As she rotated, she thought she caught a glimpse of something on the edge of her vision, but her momentum continued, and she lost it quickly.

Stamping down the urge to turn to look at it, she waited impatiently for her spin to bring it back into her field of vision. This time, she knew approximately where to look and got a better view of the Roci before it was again lost to her.

Now what? How would she signal them? She only had a few more seconds before the crew of the Ando came out that airlock behind her.

Another spin and another view of the Roci. It was closer, but not close enough and she was going at approximately a sixty-degree angle away from its heading.

Another spin and she caught sight of the airlock door opening to release the Marines.

Spin. Roci.

Spin. Marines.

Two of the crew's thrusters flashed as they came after her. She was torn between relief and alarm.

Spin. Roci.

Spin. The Marines were closing the gap quickly.

Think, Niki girl. Think. What do I have that I can use?

She still had the tool pouch belted on and the wire she had used to connect to the comm array. Slowly, she retrieved the screwdriver and length of wire but even then her movement changed her rotation slightly.

Spin. The Roci was at a different angle. She was spinning on a new axis.

Spin. The Marines were almost on her, their weapons at the ready.

Spin. The Roci was out of her line of sight now.

Even expecting it, the collision of the first marine into her was jarring. She fumbled and lost her hold on the length of wire. Her rotation stopped, then she was turned to face her captors. She could see that the one holding her was talking, but without her comms, she couldn't hear him. The other marine was firing his weapon, but not at her. A blast came from behind her to her left and sent the marine to that side tumbling head over heels backwards leaving a trail of blood droplets in his wake.

Nik remembered the screwdriver in her hand as the marine holding her fumbled for his weapon. Thinking quickly, she blocked his arm, deflecting the blast wildly to her left then jabbed the screwdriver into his left arm and ripped it towards her, tearing a jagged hole in his suit.

The marine was well trained and didn't release his weapon, but he did release his grip on her and shoved her away from him straight back towards whoever was firing on him. By this time, the other marines were moving into position to aid their comrades and were firing at the threat.

Nik thudded against a hard object and bounced. Before she could do anything to stop herself from flying back towards the marines, her arm was grabbed, and she was yanked into the Roci's shuttle.

“I got her,” Amos' muffled voice yelled. “Get us out of here!”

Nik was thrown once again as the shuttle accelerated away with Amos still firing at the marines from the side hatch. This time, when she hit the wall, she grabbed a handhold and clung to it while she engaged her mag-boots. She was through tumbling around.

Once they were far enough away, Amos shut the hatch and pressurized the interior of the shuttle. Pulling his helmet off, he went forward to the cockpit, leaving Nik alone in the back. With shaking hands, she pulled off and secured her helmet then found a chair and sank into it gratefully. The adrenaline in her system still had her heart pounding and she felt like she was going to puke. She struggled to take a breath to slow her breathing.

“Put your head down,” Amos said beside her and pushed her shoulders down until her head was almost between her knees. “Breath in through your nose and blow out through your mouth.”

Nik knew this routine; she had used it on several occasions over the years to help calm panicked children. Following his orders, she was able to slow her breathing and her racing heart. She no longer felt nauseous, just shaky and tired.

“That was a smart move out there,” Amos said in a conversational tone. “I didn't have a shot with you there.”

“Thanks,” she mumbled.

“We'll be back at the Roci soon and get you checked out.”

“I'm fine, just shaken.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.”

“Okay.”

With that, Amos strapped himself in, keeping a close eye on her, but she was too exhausted to care. She was back with the crew of the Roci and all was right in the universe.


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, gentle readers, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I have outlined this story through its conclusion. Yea! I know how it's going to end now. Sometimes, when I'm writing, I let the story develop and show me the way to its conclusion and this one just reached that point. I'm giddy with excitement and a little sad because the end is in sight. The bad news is that I have been so busy the last month with work and family, I am no longer ahead of my postings with my completed chapters. That means I don't have any cushion left if I get behind on my writing. I'm still going to try to post a chapter each week, but don't panic if I miss a week here and there. This is my favorite WIP and I don't intend to abandon it. Just be patient with me if I get behind. I love all of you and appreciate all your lovely comments! Peace and joy to you in the coming year.
> 
> *****

On the Roci, it was four against one as Holden argued to rescue the crew of the Ando before its core was breached. The attack by the bots had rendered them incapable of expelling the core, not that the crippled ship could escape the blast that would follow. Nik understood that leaving the crew to their death went against everything he stood for, but the marines left on board considered them the enemy and were better armed. With enough of them on board the Roci, they would be able to overpower the five of them and take over the former warship. Nik heartedly agreed it was not worth the risk.

Holden slammed his fist down on a panel and cursed.

Naomi glided to his side and clucked sympathetically, “sometimes, Jim, there are no good options.”

“I know. I know,” he hung his head in defeat. “That doesn't mean I have to like it.”

“If it's any consolation, I'm not thrilled about it either. Those are my people out there,” Alex said quietly from his chair.

“No,” Amos corrected him, “these are your people in here.”

Silence descended as they considered their next move only to be broken by a ping from the panel by Alex.

“Whatever we're going to do, we need to do it quickly,” he told them. “There's another MCRN ship on its way.”

“How long do we have?” Holden asked.

“Not long...,” Alex started to answer when there was a flash outside the ship as the Ando lost its battle with the bots.

“Fuck,” Amos muttered under his breath.

“Jim, they're never going to believe that we didn't have anything to do with this,” Naomi pointed out.

“Technically, we did,” Holden answered her then held up a hand to stop her. “I know. Alex, get us out of here.”

****

The trip to Medina station was short but rough on the crew. Holden had Alex push the ship hard and take minimum breaks to get them there before the MCRN could pursue them. Once within range of the gate, Alex slowed the Roci's burn enough for them not to violate the speed limit of the slow zone, giving Nik ample time to observe the gate as they approached.

She had heard about the gate, sure, and seen vids and images of it, but none of those prepared her for its immensity. She had pictured it in her mind as being about the same size as Tycho station. Why would it need to be any bigger? But as it loomed in front of the ship, it blotted out everything else in the sky. Other ships entering and leaving through it were just dots against its expanse. The very idea of going through it chilled her, but Holden and his crew had gone through it first without batting an eye. There was no way she was going to let them see how much the gate disturbed her.

“Overwhelming, isn't it?”

She jumped involuntarily at Naomi's voice interrupted her thoughts.

“How did you do it?” she asked quietly.

“Sometimes stupidity wins over common sense,” the other woman smiled sadly. “There was nothing heroic about our going through first. Only need.”

“I'm sure the history books will make it sound heroic.”

“Maybe,” Naomi responded.

Unable to hold back, Nik blurted, “I'm never going to make it to Ganymede, am I?”

Her eyes wide, Naomi turned towards her. “Sésata, don’t give up hope!”

Tears burned hot in her eyes as she replied, “everything we do just seems to take us farther and farther away.”

“Nik, you can't think like that.” Naomi took her by that shoulders and turned her to look into her eyes. “We are going to get back with your family, never doubt that. Im da sheng.”

Taking a deep breath, Nik told her what she wanted to hear even though she didn't believe it, “ya, you're right. I just need to have a little faith.”

Naomi searched her eyes and she tried to project a certainty that she didn’t feel, hoping the other woman would accept her answer. After a moment, Naomi smiled.

“Gud.”

Passing through the ring was unlike anything she had experienced before. Reality seemed to slow and stretch. It was as if she was everywhere yet nowhere all at once. She tried to move her hand and felt it move but watched as it stayed where it lay on the bulkhead next to the view port. She doubled her efforts to move it and recoiled in alarm as the Roci emerged on the other side of the ring and her hand obeyed her command and flew towards her face.

Disoriented for a moment, she was startled by a chuckle nearby.

Scowling, she looked over at Amos.

“Almost gave myself a black eye once doing that. You should be careful.”

Imagining him doing the same thing that she just did, she smiled back, “I'll keep that in mind, taki.”

Outside, Medina station came into view. Nik had been on Tycho station while it was being constructed and had spent years of her life in its shadow only able to catch glimpses of it through the few view ports available to the lower classes or stills of it on the vids. Now, seeing it in its entirety for the first time, she was slightly disappointed. Massive in size compared to the multitude of ships surrounding it and almost glowing against the stark backdrop of the slow zone, it was still just another space station now, not the visionary generation ship that it had been born as.

“It will get more impressive when we're closer,” Amos told her, as if sensing her thoughts.

Not turning away from the port but acutely aware of his intense gaze, she replied, “it's not that. Well, ya it is. But it's kinda sad that it is just sitting here like an ordinary space station. It was going to take humanity out of the sol system, now it is stuck here watching as other ships do what it was meant to do.”

“I don't know about all that,” his brow furrowed as he considered her answer. “It's still serving an important purpose.”

Nik kept her eyes on the huge ship-turned station for a few more moments before chancing a look at her companion, only to find herself alone in the corridor again. Typical, she thought. Turning away from the port, she made her way to her room to be alone  
with her thoughts.

Once there, however, she pushed all the sad thoughts away and picked up the exercise bands. Maybe physical activity would help get her out of the funk she was in.

****  
The group that gathered in the galley was subdued. Mars had released a statement describing their “attack” on the Ando with an unknown weapon and labeled them terrorists. The MCRN was threatening military retaliation against anyone that aided and abetted them. Medina station was refusing to allow them to dock until they could get it sorted out.

“Can we release our own statement? We have proof of the picobots,” Alex suggested.

“No, we have blurry images that could be anything,” Naomi corrected him. “And Nik did use them against the Ando.”

“What was I supposed to do?” she protested. “Let them throw me out an airlock?”

“That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it.” Naomi snapped, then visibly calmed herself before continuing, “I’m just saying that we don’t have a lot to refute what they are saying.”

“Then let me tell my story.”

“I’m not sure how that will help. It will be your story against that of the MCRN. At best, you will split public opinion, but I doubt you will get Mars to back down with a sad story. Especially one that paints them as the villains.”

Nik sighed dejectedly, “you guys would have been better off to leave me on the Ando. With me dead, Mars wouldn’t have anything to hold against you.”

Holden’s head lifted at that statement.

“You know, you’re right.”

“Jim!” Naomi stood and turned to him in alarm.

“No, listen,” he waved her down. “There’s no proof Nik made it off the Ando. But there is proof that she was on it and that we willingly handed her over to them.”

Naomi was nodding, “and we have proof that we pleaded with them to allow us to help evacuate the ship.”

“And that our ship was also attacked.”

“Hold on,” Alex put in. “Are you suggesting that we tell everyone that Nik died?”

“That’s exactly what they are suggesting,” Amos told him.

“What happens when they find out she’s alive?”

“We can change her ID,” Holden answered.

“That won’t work,” Amos shook his head. “They know what she looks like now and when she shows up on Ganymede, they’ll just grab her there.”

“Then she stays with us.” Holden turned to Nik, “you’re practically a crew member now. What do you say? Stay on and make it permanent.”

“Yeah,” Alex grinned, “join us. See the system. Explore new worlds. Meet exciting new life forms that can kill you. Trigger alien technology that could destroy all life in the system. What more could you ask for?”

Nik’s chest tightened at the thought of being part of their crew and tears filled her eyes. A blink dislodged one of them and a droplet floated away from her face. She swiped her eyes with her sleeve before exchanging a tortured look with Naomi.

“She can’t,” the other woman told the men. “It would kill her to stay with us.”

“Of course, she would miss her family,” Alex said. “But this would protect them, too.”

“No, Alex. It would actually kill her.”

“What are you talking about?” Holden asked Naomi.

“I have SSAS,” Nik answered him.

A shocked silence descended on the crew.

“Shit,” Alex broke the silence.

“Can it be cured?” Holden asked.

“No. The symptoms can be treated up to a point, but once the cellular damage reaches a certain point, it’s irreversible,” Naomi told him.

“How long?”

“It varies from person to person, but she’s still in the early stages, so she has a while.”

“Define ‘a while’.”

“Maybe a few weeks continually on the float. I don’t know.”

Holden nodded, “so we’re not talking hours or days, then.”

“No,” Nik agreed. “The meds are working for now.”

“So, we have time to come up with a different plan, then.”

“Uh, no, we don’t, Hoss,” Alex jumped in.

“What now?”

“MCRN warships are coming through the gate."

“Does the universe hate us or something? Can’t we ever catch a break?” Holden groaned.

“Apparently not,” Alex shook his head. “We have multiple incoming transmissions.”

Holden looked at Nik, “it’s up to you. Do I tell them you’re dead or not?”

She didn’t even have to think about it.

“Ya. We’ll figure the rest out later. Let’s just get them off you for now.”

“Good choice,” he nodded, standing up to leave the galley. “Go find a good place to hide in case they want to search us to verify.”

She wanted to watch the exchange, but knew he was right. She would want to confirm for herself if the tables were turned. Unfortunately for the Martians, they were dealing with someone who had spent her life hiding. They didn’t stand a chance.

Turning to say something to Amos, she discovered that he had already left the galley. Disappointed, she stepped out into the corridor and began her search.

It would have to be somewhere so small and overlooked that nobody would ever think to look for her there. Her search led her to the maintenance shop. The 3-D printer that she had repaired still stood in the corner. Most of the time, small hoppers along the side were used to hold the raw material needed for printing; however, this model had a hopper for a large quantity of raw material when printing large or multiple objects was required. Though a tight fit, she thought it would be large enough for her to squeeze into, providing she didn’t have to hide for a protracted length of time.

As she was removing the back panel to double check, the door to the bay slid open and Amos walked in. Standing to face him, for once she had no problem reading him and she was glad the printer was between them. Striding across the space, he leaned across it to glower at her.

“Were you going to tell me?”

Staying calm, she looked him in the eyes, “there was nothing you could do.”

He slammed his palms down on the printer, making her jump, “that’s not the point and you know it!”

He pushed off the printer and walked a few steps away, keeping his back to her.

“Damnit, Kitten. You’re slowly dying out here and keeping it a secret.”

“Naomi knew. She was the one that got me on medication for the symptoms. I didn’t tell the rest of you because I didn’t want to be treated like I was sick. I didn’t want to look in your eyes and see pity.”

He turned around and stared at her, “you think I’d feel sorry for you?”

“I don’t know, but I didn’t want to take that chance. I didn’t want to be treated different because of it and you know that’s what would happen. If not by you, then by Jim and Alex.”

His anger died a little and he nodded, “yeah, probably.”

“I love being here on the Roci with you guys. If it wasn’t for the SSAS, I would gladly stay. I want to stay. But I only have until we can get this mess fixed and make it to Ganymede. After that, I’ll never go out on a ship again. Forgive me for wanting to enjoy what little time I have.”

He snorted, “you have a strange definition of fun if you’re enjoying all this.”

“Well, apart from the threats of death and bots eating the ship out from under us,” she smiled.

“What are you doing there?” he changed topics abruptly.

Nik looked down at the printer, “I am thinking about using the large hopper inside as a hiding place in case the marines want to search the ship.”

“Let’s see,” he went to her side and squatted down to help her finish removing the panel. 

They worked quietly together for a few minutes. Putting the panel aside, they peered into the space. The hopper took up most of the space with just a narrow gap between it and the rest of the components of the printer.

“That is going to be tight, even for you.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Give me a hand.”

Using Amos for support, she crawled into the hopper feet first. When the gap proved to be too narrow for her torso, they unscrewed it’s side supports to tilt it more, still, she barely managed to contort her body enough to squeeze through. Kneeling, she leaned forward and pressed her body against her thighs. It was tight and would be uncomfortable, but it would work. She might not be able to feel her legs for a while when she got back out, though.

“This will work,” she announced. Reaching out to Amos, “help me out please.”

“Are you sure?”

“I mean, it will suck. And someone will have to close it behind me and then open it back up afterwards. But, yeah, it will work.”

Getting out was harder than getting in due to the sloped sides of the hopper, and she fell against Amos with a thud as her feet slipped. He caught her and held her against his chest. Sighing, she rested her cheek against his chest and breathed in his unique scent. Instead of releasing her, Amos’ arms tightened around her, holding her close. They stayed like that in silence until the comm panel chimed and Holden’s disembodied voice broke the spell.

“Nik, come to the bridge.”

Standing, Amos set her back on her feet before letting her go and stepping back.

“Thanks,” Nik said, looking up at him. “I needed that.”

He just nodded with an unreadable expression, “better go see what the next disaster is.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“Nah, I got some things I need to do.”

Before she left the bay, she chanced another glance back at him, but he had squatted down behind the printer again and she couldn’t see his face anymore. Smiling to herself, she left the maintenance bay and headed for the bridge.


	32. Chapter 32

On the bridge, the other three crew members were waiting on her. Their faces told her how it went with the MCRN before anyone said a word.

“That bad?”

“They’re not buying it,” Holden confirmed grimly.

“Not surprising,” she frowned. “What now?”

“I sent a message to the UN Secretary General and asked her to intervene. We’re waiting on her response, but she won’t even get the message for another 10 minutes.”

“In the meantime, those angry Martians out there are threatening to forcibly board the Roci and take us into custody,” Alex added.

“And Drummer won’t let us dock,” Naomi finished.

Nik hung her head, “still want me to be part of your crew?”

Holden patted her on the shoulder, “don’t worry about it. If it wasn’t you, it would be something else. We have a knack for getting into messes like this. We’ve survived worse.”

“The good news is that they don’t dare fire on us in here,” Alex told her.

“But we can’t fire back either.”

“True.”

“What are we going to do? Go in slow circles until they get tired of chasing us?”

“That’s the plan. At least until we come up with something better,” Holden answered. “There’s only two of them, so it will be hard for them to corner us.”

“Um, Hoss,” Alex interrupted, “there’s two more warships coming through the gate right now.”

“Things are going to get crowded in here if they keep coming,” Naomi said pulling up the area on her console.

“They are ordering us to stand down for boarding.”

“Keep us out of range of their grapples, Alex.”

“This is going to get dicey if we’re not going to break the speed limit,” Alex threw over his shoulder as he fired the thrusters to move the ship out of reach. “And the old girl still isn’t one-hundred percent.”

“Just do what you can,” Holden told him. “I need time to think.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I’ll stay and give him a second set of eyes,” Naomi volunteered.

“Let’s hope Avasarala comes through for us again,” he told her as he stepped onto the ladder.

****

After an hour and several close calls with the warships they were running from, Holden still hadn’t heard from Avasarala.

“Goddamnit!” Holden cursed as he paced. 

"I guess saving the system a couple times only buys us so much good will,” Amos joked.

“Could you just turn me over to them and say you had no involvement?” Nik asked. She was tired of her new friends risking their lives for her.

“No,” Jim shook his head. “Even if we wanted to, it’s too late for that now. We’ve lied and are actively keeping you away from them. They’d never believe we’re not involved. Anyway, if we let them get close enough to take you, they could go ahead and board us. It’d be lose-lose.”

“Jim, we can’t keep this up. Alex has been at it for an hour and he’s going to get tired and slip up eventually,” Naomi told him.

“You think I don’t know that?”

“Hey, guys,” Alex called out. “We got more incoming.”

As they watched, two more MCRN ships came through the ring.

“Jim, there’s no way we can outmaneuver six ships.”

“Um,” Alex cleared his throat, “there are three belter ships changing course now.”

“What do you mean?” Holden leaned over his shoulder to look.

Naomi’s panel beeped.

“It’s Drummer,” she told them as she read the incoming transmission. “She’s having them run interference for us.”

As the Roci and the six warships played a lethal game of tag around the slow zone, a total of five belter ships joined them, trying to stay between the Martians and the Roci. With room to breathe, Holden came up with an idea.

Pointing to one of the gates, he asked, “can you get us through it without getting caught?”

“Do bears shit in the woods?” Alex answered.

Naomi and Nik exchanged confused looks.

“What are you thinking,” Naomi asked.

“We still can’t keep this up indefinitely. Not without dragging the entire system into conflict because of it.”

“But we can’t outrun them either,” she pointed out.

“But we’ll have room to maneuver.”

Amos looked up from the console he was consulting, “that’s one of the unexplored systems. We don’t know what’s waiting for us on the other side.”

“That’s why I chose it. Look,” Holden held up his hands to stop more objections, “we have three choices. Keep this up until we either screw up and get caught or start a system-wide shooting war. Head back into the Sol system and hope the UN comes through for us before we’re blown apart by the MCRN. Or we can go through that gate and maybe find another option. At least we go down fighting and don’t take everyone with us.”

Everyone was silent as they considered his words.

“Or, you can give me the shuttle and I turn myself over to them,” Nik suggested.

“We have no way of knowing that will stop them even then,” Holden shook his head.

“I’ll let the other ships know what we intend to do,” Naomi announced. “If they can delay the warships for as long as possible, we’ll have a good head start. Who knows how far they’re willing to chase us in an unknown system?”

“Hopefully not as far as we’re willing to run,” Alex quipped, not taking his eyes from his screen.

Once again Nik strapped in for a high-G burn. Naomi had been right; it sucked every time. There was no getting used to it, but knowing what to expect made it less stressful, so maybe that was the most she could hope for.

Burning as fast as they dared to the ring gate Holden had picked, they watched as the MCRN ships changed course to pursue and the belter ships maneuver to stay between the Roci and them.

Getting the go-ahead from Medina, they passed through the ring uneventfully and lost contact with the slow zone on LADAR. Until the MCRN ships passed through behind them, they would be blind to any pursuit.

The system they entered seemed ordinary enough on their scans. A white A-type main sequence dwarf star nearly twice the size of Sol orbited by a small red dwarf formed the heart of the system. Three gas giants were in close orbits around the pair. Further out, in the ‘Goldilocks’ zone, were two rocky planets just a bit bigger than Earth and several smaller than Mars. A wide asteroid belt separated the inner planets from the far-flung outer ones, including at least one more gas giant.

“Since we’re the first, do we get to name it?” Alex asked.

“Only if we live,” Amos answered.

“Speaking of,” Holden broke in, “let’s head for the belt and get some distance between us and the gate.”

“Got it, Hoss. Plotting a course now.”

“At least there’s plenty of places to hide,” Naomi said.

“Here comes the juice,” Alex announced as he increased their burn to race away from the ring at an angle nearly parallel to its plain.

****

Nearly twelve hours later, they were still playing hide and seek in the asteroid belt with five of the warships. They had managed to put enough distance between them and the gate before the six ships came through and tucked in behind a large asteroid and went silent. It took a while for one of the ships that were searching for them to get close enough to pick up the slight heat signature they were still giving off. Then the chase began again.

Tempers were running high onboard as the stress took its toll on the crew. Keeping larger asteroids between the Roci and five other ships required not only the skills of their pilot, but of Naomi and Holden. Alex, normally even-tempered, had yelled at Naomi when she calculated the trajectory for the wrong asteroid.

Feeling useless, Nik anxiously followed the action on her screen.

“How’re you holding up?”

She looked up from her screen and looked over at Amos. Throughout the run, he had been quiet, seeming to doze in his chair.

“It gets a little easier each time,” she lied. “But I don’t think I will ever get used to high-G maneuvers.”

He frowned, “that’s not what I’m talking about.”

Oh. “I’m fine.” Another lie, but she was not going to tell him that she was only keeping herself from screaming her frustration at being so completely at the mercy of others by chewing on the insides of her cheeks. The coppery tang of blood on her tongue and the pain gave her something else to focus on besides her helplessness in this situation.

He leveled a look at her that said ‘bullshit’ loud and clear, “you have blood on the corner of your mouth.”

Did nothing escape his notice? “I bit my lip when we changed direction and slipped behind the two cruisers.”

Amos looked unconvinced. “It’s a hard thing to have to rely on others if you’re not used to it,” he said casually. “The things I can do, the things I’m good at, don’t mean a damn right now. If we get boarded, that’s where I come in. Their job is to make sure it doesn’t come down to that.”

“And where do my skills, what I’m good at, come in?” she shot back. “I know how to hide and steal. What good is that?”

“Come on, Kitten,” he shook his head slightly against the force pressing him down in his chair, “you’ve got more skills than those. You know the systems of this ship and how to fix things. You can rebuild a printer from junk and scraps. You just need to get creative.”

She looked at him dubiously, “right.”

“Hold on to your hats, partners,” Alex’s voice over the comm made her jump, “this is going to be a close one!”

Looking down at her screen, Nik saw that two of the frigates were closing in on them from each side as one of the cruisers slipped up behind them, then her chair pivoted with the change in course and she closed her eyes to keep the nausea at bay.

“In coming!” Naomi grunted.

“Got it,” Holden answered.

Through the hull of the ship, Nik heard the thrum of the PDCs as they fired.

“Should we fire back?” Naomi asked.

“No,” Holden told her firmly, “we will only fire in self-defense.”

“Are you serious?”

“We are not going to engage five warships. It would be suicide. Right now, they’re just trying to disable and board us. We don’t want to give them any reason to blow us out of existence.”

On her screen, Nik watched as the distance increased marginally between them and the three red dots. Two other red dots moved in from a different angle while a sixth dot moved sharply away from them and the others.

“Hey,” she keyed her comm unit, “did another MCRN come through the gate?”

“No,” Naomi replied quickly, “why? What do you see?”

Looking back down at her screen, Nik tried unsuccessfully to locate the sixth dot among the scattered asteroids. “That’s weird,” she frowned.

“What?” Holden asked this time.

“I just saw a sixth ship out here with us, but it’s gone now.” She sighed, “sorry, I guess I was wrong.”

“No,” Naomi said. “It could be a stealth ship.”

“Shit,” Alex cursed. “We can’t run from a ship we can’t see.”

“Nik send Naomi the coordinates where you saw it and keep your eyes out for it. If it showed up once, it might do so again,” Holden told her.

“Kay, I’m on it.” 

Yea! She finally had something to do.

Her elation dissipated as she scanned her screen over the next few minutes as the others continued their efforts to avoid the MCRN ships.

“We have incoming!” Alex barked.

“I see them,” Holden answered in a tight voice. “We’ve got four nukes.”

"Hold on, I’ll try to shake them.”

Nik swallowed down the bile that rose in her throat as the Roci lurched in a new direction and accelerated. The smaller flashing dots that marked the torpedoes moved faster than the larger dots on her screen. She watched as one impacted an asteroid as their ship whipped around it, using the rock as a shield. Another was diverted by the ensuing explosion and detonated almost immediately afterwards.

“Two down,” Alex breathed. “Still got the others on our tail.”

“Deploying countermeasures,” Holden intoned.

Another abrupt change in direction, then the third flashing dot disappeared.

“One still locked on,” Alex said.

Her eyes watering from focusing intently on her screen, Nik unconsciously held her breath as the final blinking dot rapidly closed the distance between it and the Roci. A solid dot blinked into existence moving almost perpendicular to their course and moved between them and the torpedo.

“Guys,” she called out. “Are you seeing this?”

Before anyone responded, the torpedo changed course slightly to intercept the new target then disappeared from the screen.

“What the hell was that?” Holden asked.

“Who cares?” Alex answered. “It took out the final nuke.”

“I don’t detect any radiation from the explosion,” Naomi said. “Jim, it didn’t explode, we just stopped getting a return from it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…,” she stopped suddenly. “Oh, my God.”

On Nik’s screen, dozens of red dots appeared throughout the asteroids around them. Unlike the six dots that denoted the Roci and the MCRN warships, there were no designations for them on the display.

“The computer can’t identify any of the ships,” Naomi said.

“Pulling up a visual,” Holden said before her screen changed from the LADAR display to an outside camera feed.

“What the hell?” Amos exclaimed.

“Um, can someone explain what I am seeing?” Alex asked in confusion.

Nik understood exactly how he felt as her heart hammered in her chest.


	33. Chapter 33

The ship on the screen looked unlike any that she had ever seen. Shaped roughly like a flattened cigar with a taper that came to a blunt point at one end and several elongated protrusions on the other, it hung, suspended and motionless just a hundred meters from the Roci. What looked like a long wing stretched from end to end at its midline. A blue glow emanating from within lit the entire outer hull, punctuated with bright flashes of blue-white lights that traveled in parallel lines from the pointed end to the start of the protrusions. It looked more organic than constructed, which was crazy, but so were the ring gates and the slow zone, so who was to say what was possible, Nik thought to herself.

“It looks…,” Alex started.

“Alive,” Naomi finished.

“That’s not possible,” Holden stated.

“Um, Boss, there’s more closing in,” Alex’s voice was higher than normal, his accent flat. “What do you want me to do?”

“Whoever, whatever, they are, they’re not threatening us. Just stay put and watch for now,” Holden told him.

Nik flinched as a high-pitched whine echoed through the ship and an eerie feeling made her skin prickle as every hair stood straight up.

“What the hell is that?” Amos asked.

“They’re scanning us,” Holden answered. “I think.”

“Should I scan them back?” Naomi asked.

“No, let’s not do anything provocative.”

The whine and feeling only lasted a few seconds before it passed. Then a long, tense moment stretched out as they waited for something to happen.

“The Cydonia is hailing them,” Naomi said into the strained silence that followed.

“Any answer?”

“None.”

“I don’t like this,” Alex’s voice was back to its normal tone and drawl.

“Just stay calm,” Holden directed at all of them.

“They’re all around us,” Naomi said.

Nik split her screen and pulled the LADAR back up. All around the Roci were red dots with no designations. They were surrounded. So were the MCRN ships that had pursued them into the asteroid belt.

“The Koto is firing on one!” Naomi’s voice was strained in her ear.

On the screen one of the red dots moved in close to the Koto, coming within meters of the Cruiser, then moved past it to rejoin the ranks of its fleet. The Koto’s dot turned purple.

“The Koto’s reactor is down,” Naomi continued her commentary on the actions going on around them.

“What did that ship fire?” Holden asked.

“Nothing that I could detect,” she answered.

“Another MCRN ship is firing,” Alex said. “I’m getting us out of here while they’re distracted.”

“No,” Holden ordered. “Don’t do anything. We don’t want them to think we’re going to attack too.”

Nik heard Alex curse up above her and slam his hand down on something, but the Roci stayed where it was.

On her half of the screen showing outside, the camera angle changed as Naomi switched to a different camera to watch the encounter. While the first ship they had observed had nothing nearby to use for a size reference, the size of ships converging on the Martians could readily be assessed. Many were the same size or slightly larger than the warships, but several were more than twice that size and there were a few that appeared to be almost as big as a space station. Scattered among them were much smaller ones, maybe the size of shuttles.

The Martian ship was firing on one of these smaller ships on the fringes of the group nearest it. The glow of the alien ships turned from blue to red and the largest ones from the group approached the ship that attacked. Nik watched as the red ship neared the Sally Ride. As before, the ship came within meters of the Martian vessel then glided past. The dot on her screen turned purple.

“The Sally Ride’s reactor is down,” Naomi announced unnecessarily. 

The other MCRN ships open fired on the alien ships around them in an attempt to fight their way out of the asteroid belt and, one by one, they were all disabled quickly and quietly by the others.

“Okay,” Alex said, drawing out the word, “we’re just going to sit here and mind our own business. Nothing threatening about us.”

“Good idea,” Amos remarked.

Nik looked up to meet his eyes. She wondered if her expression was as stressed as his.

“They’re all moving towards the ring gate,” Naomi said.

Around them, the strange ships, still glowing red, moved away, leaving the Roci surrounded only by asteroids and the disabled Martian ships.

“What now, boss?”

“Let them put some distance between us, then we will follow them,” Holden told him. “Slowly.”

“Roger that. Slow and unthreatening.”

After a few minutes, Holden let Alex take them out of the belt and towards the ring gate. As they passed the disabled MCRN ships, Naomi scanned them. There was no discernable damage on any of them, but they floated with no power, or comms, like discarded trash among the rocks of the belt.

“Anyone alive on them?” Holden asked.

“Yeah, I’m picking up a full complement of life signs for the crews.”

“So, these aliens somehow managed to shut them down without firing a shot or killing anyone?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“How do you fight something like that?” he wondered.

“It looked like they have to be close for it to work,” she answered. “So just don’t let them get close.”

Ahead, the fleet of ships were fading from red back to blue as they left the asteroid belt and the MCRN ships behind them.

“We just can’t leave them out here like this,” Alex said referring to the Martians.

“There’s still the Hijo de Puta at the gate. They’ll mount a rescue,” Jim told him.

“If they can,” Alex grunted. “Hopefully, they learned from the others’ mistake.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

****

A few hours later, they were close enough to the gate to see the alien ships arrayed in front of it and the remaining MCRN ship between them. It was still red on the LADAR screen.

“I’ll be damned,” Alex said, “they did learn.”

“Oh, give them a minute,” Holden responded dryly.

As if on cue, the Hiju de Puta fired up its thrusters and raced for the ring.

“Damnit,” Alex said, “they just had to prove you right, didn’t they?”

“I don’t think they can help it. Not every Martian can be like you and Bobby.”

“Too bad. The system would be a lot better off if there were.”

The ship disappeared through the ring gate, leaving them alone in the strange system with the alien fleet.

“Now what?” Alex asked.

“We wait.”

Fortunately, they didn’t have to wait long before there was movement within the alien fleet. Four of the ships, one large and three slightly smaller broke off from the group and approached the gate. One by one, each ship passed through its plane and into the slow zone.

“Someone is shitting themselves right now,” Amos said into the silence.

“Let’s hope that Drummer is smarter than the Martians,” Holden said.

“She is, but it might not be up to her,” Naomi added.

The four ships were followed by another group, then three more, for a total of five groups; twenty ships altogether.

“Are they invading?” Alex asked.

“I don’t know,” Holden mused. “They didn’t appear hostile and they completely ignored us.”

“Almost like we don’t matter,” Naomi said.

“What if they’ve been trapped here since the ring system stopped working? Now they’re just trying to go home?” Nik voiced her thoughts out loud.

"That was millions, possibly billions, of years ago,” Holden told her. “There’s no way.”

“Why?” she came back. “You don’t believe a civilization from millions of years ago could still exist?”

“No, the ones that destroyed the ring builders destroyed every system connected by the ring gates.”

“Not ours.”

“That’s because our ring hadn’t been built yet. Eros never reached its intended destination and the protomolecule was never activated. We were never part of the ring gate system.”

“That’s the only reason humanity exists today,” Naomi added.

“Twice over,” Holden said grimly. “The protomolecule would have extinguished all life on earth for material to build the gate. And if that wasn’t enough, anything that evolved after that would have been wiped out by the ring builders’ enemy.”

Nik sat back in her chair to digest what he just told her. The thought that humanity only existed because of an accident was staggering. Then she considered the thirteen-hundred systems that had been part of the system and the civilizations that had been ended for the rings to exist.

“They’re moving,” Alex intoned.

“I’m going to scan one,” Naomi said decisively. “We need to know something about them, Jim.”

“Go ahead, but, Naomi,” he hesitated.

“Huh?”

“Don’t pick a little one.”

Her eyes back on the monitor, she watched as the alien ships glided past them back into the system. One of them came close enough to make out details on the hull. It wasn’t smooth like it appeared from a distance. Textured with ridges that reminded her of ripples in liquid, with shallow depressions in the valleys between them, it reinforced the feeling of something organic.

They didn’t go back into the asteroid belt, though. Instead they angled away from it and towards the outer planets. Once all the glowing ships were past the Roci, they accelerated as a unit, disappearing from the camera view instantly. Shortly afterwards, the LADAR lost contact with them also and the Roci was left alone in front of the ring.

“I’ve never seen anything move that fast,” Alex’s voice was filled with awe.

“They left the system,” Naomi said.

“What did your scan show?” Holden asked her.

“Nothing.”

“What? Did they block it?”

“I don’t think so.” 

“Send me what you got.” There was a long pause. “No life forms detected. No propulsion system detected. No electronic signatures detected. Not even a heat signature from them. What the hell are we dealing with?”

“I think you were right, Jim,” Nik said slowly. “They were never part of the ring system. They’re something new.”

“Yeah,” he replied slowly.


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure what happened. Apparently the chapter that I posted last week never posted. I apologize for the confusion!

Holden kept the Roci in the new system after the departure of the alien ships, unsure how safe it was to traverse back into the slow zone. Alex had retired to his quarters for a well-deserved rest while Naomi manned the bridge. While they waited, Naomi showed Nik how to use the scanner and together they scanned the new system. Two of the planets had breathable atmospheres and abundant plant life while another had a thick layer full of hydrocarbons that could be converted into an atmosphere with some effort. The third, the largest planet in the Goldilocks zone, had remnants of alien ruins covering most of its surface.

Naomi remarked on how they reminded her of the ruins of Ilus then told Nic about their narrow escape from the planet.

Nik heaved a heavy sigh, “I would love to be part of this crew permanently.”

“Yeah, but at least you have family waiting for you. It’s not like you’re all alone.”

“I know,” she agreed. “And I won’t be a station rat anymore, either.”

“Will you miss it?” Naomi asked.

“Will I miss having to scavenge for food? Sleeping on rags? Hiding from station security and brothel owners?” she gave a short laugh. “No, I won’t miss that part. But there were good things too. We came and went as we pleased. Weren’t accountable to anyone but ourselves. Knew every inch of the station. I think I will miss that.”

“I can see that,” Naomi agreed. “It’s a trade-off, I’m sure.”

“Mouse will be able to do things I never had a chance to. She’ll get to go to school, maybe even university. She’ll have a future she wouldn’t had on Tycho.”

“Not just her,” Naomi turned in her chair to meet Nik’s eyes. “You’re still young. You can have those things too. You’re smart and good with your hands. The belt and the colonies will need more like you.”

“You think so?”

“I know so,” Naomi told her confidently. “Don’t limit yourself. You can still be out here on the leading edge of humanity. If that’s what you want.”

Nik frowned, “I don’t know what I want.”

“Not yet but give yourself time. Learn. Explore. Never give up.”

Sound advice. “Thanks, sésata.”

“We beltas have to stick together.”

****

Shortly after they completed their scans of the system, the effects of the alien’s weapon wore off the MCRN ships. One after another, their reactors came back online, and they reestablished comms with one another. Naomi prepared the ship for another high-speed burn to escape them, but they steered directly towards the ring gate, ignoring the Roci, and passed through without incident.  
No more than an hour later, a belter ship came through the ring to relay a transmission from Medina. The MCRN ships had departed the slow zone so it was safe for the Roci to return.

Going back through the ring gate, they found the slow zone in a much different state than before they left. Where previously it had been busy with various ships coming and going from the ring colonies, now there were just a few ships hovering around Medina station. Speaking with Drummer, they learned that the five groups of alien vessels that had entered the slow zone had ignored the human ships and all attempts to communicate with them and had immediately left through different rings. One group went through the Sol ring. The Martian ship that had preceded them followed the group into the human’s home system and the others had followed when they came through.

Transmissions from the Sol system informed them that the aliens had scanned the system before rapidly leaving for the depths of space beyond. Whatever they were searching for, humanity did not have. Two other groups of alien craft had entered systems with nascent colonies and had repeated the actions. The final two groups had departed through unexplored rings.

Living off the dead carcass of an ancient alien civilization was one thing, but actual aliens? All humanity was stunned by the prospect. Research expeditions into the source system were already being planned. Speculation about the origins of the aliens and their craft abounded. Nik and her picobots were virtually forgotten. Almost.

Drummer had relented and allowed them to dock on Medina while Holden tried to get a read on their situation with Mars. Excited to finally set foot on the behemoth she had spent most of her life watching being built, Nik stayed busy exploring the station. The gravitational force produced by its rotation was slightly more than that of Tycho, so her SSAS went into remission. More importantly, she took the opportunity to distance herself from the crew of the Roci. She reasoned it would make it easier for her to say goodbye to them when it was finally safe for her to travel to Ganymede. Or at least she hoped it would make it easier.

****

Sitting at a small food counter, happily slurping noodles, Nik started when Amos dropped onto the stool next to her. Catching the vendor’s eye, he ordered noodles then sat quietly while he waited for his food to be served. It had been three days since she had seen him, and she took the opportunity to steal sidelong glances at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. He looked good. Too good. He had trimmed the scruff of his beard and gotten a haircut since she last saw him, accenting the strong angle of his jaw, the muscles underneath flexing as he ate.

Nik looked up from her scrutiny of his jaw as was captured by his intense blue stare. She flushed hotly and looked back down at her bowl, concentrating on finishing to keep from looking back up at him. He snorted and returned to his own food.

Breaking the silence, she asked, “has Holden heard anything yet?”

“Yep,” his answer was short.

“And?”

“You’re in the clear. Chrissy worked her political back channels and talked the Martians down. Probably in a way that benefited her, but who cares if they leave you alone.”

“And you guys?”

“Yeah, they still hate our guts, but they’re not going to shoot us on sight anymore.”

She breathed a sigh of relief, “that’s fantastic. I hate that I got you guys into this mess in the first place. I’m glad you’re good.”

“You done?”

She looked down at her bowl, “yeah, I guess.”

“No,” he turned on his stool to face her, “are you done being a martyr?”

She stiffened at his tone and spat, “pashing fong, dzhemang!”

Some of the belters around her laughed as she angrily pushed away from the counter and stalked off.

“Hey,” he grabbed her arm to pull her to a stop.

“Let me go! I don’t need you insulting me. In fact, I don’t need you at all. Go back to your ship and your crew and leave me the fuck alone, welwela.” She kicked him.

“That’s better,” he smiled at her anger. “I was getting tired of you moping around.”

He dropped her arm, “come on.”

She planted her hands on her hips, “I’m not going to follow you every time you snap your fingers.”  
He turned and took several steps before looking back at her with a slight smile, “Are you coming?”

Nik almost stomped her foot like a child but realized there were several sets of eyes on her, so she settled on huffing and rolling her eyes before following him. Her irritation turned to confusion when he didn’t head back to the docks and the Roci. Instead he led her to a residential section of the station. Everything was still new and shiny, a marked difference between Medina and her old home. Looking around at the religious art that adorned the walls, she didn’t notice a small form hurtling itself at her until it collided with her, nearly knocking her over.

“Nik!” Mouse cried as she wrapped her arms around Nik’s thighs.

“Mouse! What are you doing here?” Nik pried the girl’s arms away enough to squat down beside her and hug her tightly. “Where is Maggie and Lucky?”

“Right here, Niki girl,” Maggie said from behind her.

Picking up Mouse as she stood, Nik turned around. Maggie was standing there with Lucky who was grinning like he’d just gotten away with the biggest prank of his life.

“You’re here,” she managed to get out before both enveloped her and Mouse in a group hug.

“We came…,”

“It was cool…,”

“I missed you….”

All three started talking at once.

“I missed you, too,” she kissed the top of Mouse’s head, “but let Maggie talk first.”

“We have rooms here,” Maggie smiled. “Come. I’ll tell you everything.”

“Hold on,” she said and turned to thank Amos, only to find him gone. “I hate it when you do that,” she muttered before following Maggie and Lucky.

Like the rest of the ship, the quarters that her family occupied were clean and spacious, although Nik could see hints that Maggie was settling in already: a small line of items that somehow survived their mad exit from Tycho on a metal shelf, piles of folders on the table, three boxes stacked against a wall. 

Sitting down and settling Mouse on her lap, she brushed the girl’s hair out of her face and kissed her on the tip of her nose. Then she looked up at Maggie, “Ok, spill it. What are you guys doing here?”

“We came here for you, my girl,” Maggie grinned. “There’s just as much work needs doing on this station as on Ganymede, and they don’t require you digging in the dirt here.”

Lucky was nodding his agreement, “yeah, they’re training pilots here to ferry goods out to the new colonies.” He puffed his thin chest up with pride, “I got accepted as an apprentice.”

Nik frowned and looked at Maggie, “he’s a little young, isn’t he?”

“I’m fourteen!” Lucky protested.

“Going to be fourteen in two months,” Maggie corrected. “They start taking apprentices at that age,” she told Nik.

Nik considered it, “sounds about right.” She grinned and reached over to clasp his arm, “congratulations, Lucky!”

The two women were quiet for a bit and let the boy tell Nik about the program. He was so excited that it was contagious and soon both were grinning just as much as he was.

“Ok,” Maggie stopped him when he finally started to slow down, “how about letting someone else talk?”

His face fell, but he agreed, “kay.”

“What about you, Maggie?”

“Can you believe there are three medical bays on this station?” Maggie asked with a twinkle in her eyes.

“I didn’t know.”

“Well, there are! And I am going to be helping out with them. Guess in what capacity?”

Remembering her crowded rooms on Tycho, Nik didn’t have to guess, “record keeping.”

Maggie cackled with glee and slapped Nik on the shoulder, “That’s my girl!”

For the next hour, they exchanged stories, then they showed her the rooms they were given. They weren’t big or fancy but compared to what all of them were used to on Tycho, they felt like the richest people alive.

“You’re gonna come live with us, right?” Lucky paused while he was showing her his room.

“Of course, she is!” Maggie told him. “We’re family now. We should be together.”

A tug on her shirt made her look down at the big dark eyes of Mouse, “you can share my room.”

She picked up the girl and gave her a big hug, “that would be perfect!”

>


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I don't know what happened. Chapter 34 did not post last week so I had to do some rearranging. Sorry for the confusion!

When she was finally able to tear herself away from her family – the thought still caused her eyes to tear up – she made her way back to the Roci to let her friends know what was going on and that they didn’t have to take her to Ganymede anymore. She also needed to gather her few belongings to move to her new room on the station.

On board, she found Naomi in the galley.

“Oye,” she greeted as she stepped into the space.

“Hey,” Naomi smiled. “How’s your family?”

Of course, she already knew they were on the station, Nik thought. “They’re great. Already settled in.” She told Naomi the news about Lucky’s apprenticeship and Maggie’s job.

“That’s good. Now you just need to find something, and you’ll be all set.”

“Think you can put in a good word for me?” she asked.

“Already have,” Naomi cocked her head. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard anything yet.”

“We’ve only been here three weeks and I haven’t been staying at the same place every night. Maybe hard for them to find me.”

“Maybe. I noticed you haven’t been staying on the Roci,” Naomi said. “It seems like you’ve been avoiding us. Want to tell me why?”

Nik looked down at the table, not meeting the other woman’s eyes. “I thought you guys might have had enough of me already,” she lied.

“Nik…,” Naomi began.

“And I didn’t want to make saying goodbye any harder than it’s already going to be,” she blurted the truth. Again, with the damn tears, she thought as she swiped her eyes with her sleeve.

Naomi reached across the table and covered her hands; her long fingers cool against Nik’s skin.

“I understand, I do, but pushing us away will only make it worse. And it’s not like you’ll never see us again. We’re going to be docking here on a regular basis,” she released Nik and leaned back. “Who knows? You might be doing repairs on the Roci the next time we dock.”

Both women smiled at the thought.

“Taki, sésata,” Nik told her. “For everything.”

“Beltas have to stick together.”

****  
Letting Naomi know where she would be living, she went to pack up her stuff in her quarters. Everything she owned fit into a small bag and only took a few minutes to gather. Standing in the middle of the small space, she smiled sadly at the thought of leaving. Despite the SSAS, the bots, and the Martians, she had felt at home on the ship. Naomi, Holden, Alex, and even Amos had made her feel like one of them. Like she mattered. It was a strange feeling coming from a group of people she barely knew.

Slowly closing the wardrobe that had been her bed for a while, she turned to leave, only to come up short. Leaning against the door was Amos.

“Joining your family?” he nodded at the bag that she clutched to her body as if it were a shield.

“Ya, they have rooms with actual beds.”

“Good.”

“I’m sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have kicked you.”

“It didn’t hurt.”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t know why I got so mad at you. You’ve been nothing but nice to me and I repay you by being a jerk and kicking you. I’m so stupid,” she was babbling, but once she started, she couldn’t stop. “I’m sorry. I mean…,”

She stopped talking abruptly when Amos crossed the room, lifted her up and against him and brought his lips down on hers in a hard kiss.

Nothing in all her years as a station rat had prepared her for this. She had instinctively wrapped her legs around his torso and grabbed his shoulders and now her body was pressed tightly against his enabling her to feel every muscle through their clothing. But that was nothing compared to the feeling of his lips against hers making a mockery of every fumbling kiss she had shared as a teenager. He kissed and sucked at each of her lips in turn, sending thrills of pleasure down her body.

The sudden coolness of the metal wall on her back was a stark contrast to the heat of his body where it touched hers. Pressing her against it, he released his grip on her waist with one hand, threading his fingers through her hair and using it as leverage to angle her head for better access to her mouth. It was a good thing Nik was hanging on tightly to his broad shoulders when he coaxed her lips apart and tasted the inside of her mouth because her legs turned to water at the sensation.

She had read romance stories that described the taste of a kiss as spicy or sweet and everything in between. Amos didn’t taste like any of those; he tasted, well, like he was supposed to taste. Like how he smelled under the layer of grease and hot metal that she had come to associate with him, but better somehow. When she tentatively returned one of his caresses with her tongue, he tightened his grip on her hair almost to the point of pain and deepened the kiss.

All the unfamiliar sensations bombarding her were overwhelming and when he broke the kiss and drew back slightly, she was panting and couldn’t open her eyes to meet his.

“Hey,” he asked, concern in his voice, “are you okay?”

Forcing her eyes open, she met his clear blue eyes and nodded slightly.

“Ya, I just wasn’t expecting that,” she breathed with a shaky voice.

Amos frowned. “Want me to put you down?”

In response, Nik pulled him back to her and pressed her own kiss against his lips.

“No,” she whispered against them.

****

Waking up a short time later, Nik was disappointed, but not surprised, to find she was in it alone. Rolling over, she saw Amos hadn't abandoned her, but was sitting at the table, still unclothed, the expression on his face impossible for her to read.

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“Would you have...,” she paused. What they did wasn't making love, but fucking seemed too crass to say out loud. “Would you have done that if I had?”

He snorted, “no.”

Which was exactly why she hadn't told him she was a virgin.

“It's not my fault you just assumed I wasn't, so don't be pissed at me.”

“How the hell was I supposed to know? You're twenty-four.”

“Who was I supposed to fuck?” Now she was angry. Flinging the blanket back, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and sat up, ignoring her state of undress. “Two twelve year-old boys?”

“There were others on the station.”

“Ya, and they all thought I was a kid. Do you know what kind of man wants to have sex with a kid?” She stood up and stalked over to glare down at him, “oh, wait, you do know. You saved me from two of them once.”

He stood up to tower over her. “You should have told me,” he said in an even voice.

“You know something? Fuck you!” she spat. “I should be laying there enjoying the aftermath of fantastic sex, but you just want to pick a fight. Get out!”

He just looked at her calmly, “does this mean you don't want to fuck again?”

That stopped her anger instantly as she realized that he wasn't angry. He asked her the question the same way he would ask her if she wanted to help him work on the rail gun or if she wanted a bowl of kibble. Unsure how to answer, she didn't answer immediately.

He nodded, “okay,” and turned to leave.

“No, wait,” she grabbed his arm to stop him. Taking a breath, she made up her mind quickly.

“Ya, I do. Do you?”

He turned back to her and smiled, “yeah.”

****

Soaking up the heat coming from the man under her, Nik luxuriated in the afterglow of the incredible sex. On the verge of dozing off, she felt him shift.

“I'm starving. Want to get something to eat?”

“Huh?”

Amos turned slightly and lifted her off him and resettled her on the mattress beside him.

“Want to get something to eat?”

“No,” she mumbled, “I'm going to stay here a little longer.”

“Suit yourself,” he shrugged as he rose and looked around for his clothes. 

From between heavy eyelids, Nik watched him as he dressed and put his shoes back on. When he went to the door, he turned back to look at her laying in the bunk.

“See you later.”

With those three words, he exited her room. When the door slid shut behind him, Nik's heart throbbed painfully in her chest and a tear slipped from her eye. Fortunately, she slipped into sleep before she could examine the aching emptiness too closely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! I don't know about you, but this was the moment I have been waiting on throughout this entire story! I hope it met your expectations.
> 
> For those of you that want a bit more, I wrote a more explicit version and posted it separately. Here is the link:
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/29541207


	36. Chapter 36

Sometime later, Nik woke up in the darkened room alone. Pushing back the blanket covering her, she rose and found her handheld. She had been asleep for a little over three hours. Amos hadn't come back since he left to find food. Refusing to think about what that meant, she quickly gathered up her belongings that had brought her back to the Roci in the first place. Pulling her clothes back on, she flinched at the tenderness in her groin. She needed to clean up, but wanted to get off the Roci as quickly as possible so it could wait until she got back to the rooms where her family lived.

Slipping out of the room, she exited the ship quietly, careful not to run into any of the crew, and made her way through the docks and into the depths of the station. Her eyes burned with unshed tears as she numbly navigated the corridors until she reached the door to the rooms.

Maggie and Mouse looked up from where they sat at the desk.

“Nik!” Mouse cried and flung herself across the room.

Catching her up, Nik hugged her close, burying her nose in the little girl's hair and inhaled her sweet scent.

“You were gone for a while,” Maggie remarked.

Pulling back from the child, she replied, “I got caught up. Sorry if I worried you.”

“Nah,” the older woman waved a hand dismissively. “I figured something had kept you.”

Mouse wiggled in her arms, “come see what we're doing.”

Nik set her back on her feet, “can I put my stuff up and clean up first?” She directed her question at Maggie.

“Luyne, love, why don't you show Nik where she can put her stuff and clean up?”

“Kay,” the child smiled and grabbed Nik's hand. “Come on, I'll show you.”

Following her into their shared room, Nik smiled thankfully at Maggie.

Mouse, Luyne, showed Nik excitedly around the room. Not very large, it still had enough space to two cabinets to hold their clothes and a large bed.

“Look! We have a real bed! Now we don't have to sleep on the floor anymore.”

Nik let her babble on for several minutes, not really listening until the child paused expectantly.

“I'm sorry, Mouse,” she felt immediately bad about not paying attention. “What did you say?”

The little girl's eyes teared up.

“Oh, Mouse, I mean Luyne! I'm sorry baby!” she knelt by the girl and hugged her. “I'm just tired. What did you say? Tell me, please.”

She leaned away and swept an errant lock of hair out of Mouse's face.

Mouse's lip trembled, but she nodded. “You're my momma now, right?”

Nik smiled, “ya, I am.”

Mouse hesitated before continuing, “then can I call you momma?”

Nik's heart swelled with love for the girl. “Of course you can,” she assured.

When Mouse still hesitated, she prodded her, “what else, sweetie?”

“My real name is Luyne?”

Nik wasn't about to tell her it actually wasn't. That it was the name of another girl that died years ago and they 'borrowed' her identity for Mouse.

“Of course,” she lied.

“But you keep calling me Mouse.”

Nik considered. “What do you want me to call you?”

Shyly, the girl mumbled, “Luyne.”

“Kay,” Nik pulled her into another hug. “I will try my best to call you that from now on. But you need to be patient with me. I'm used to Mouse and may slip up now and then.”

“Kay,” Luyne's muffled voice said.

Smiling, Nik held her away, “Well, Luyne, I smell. Show me where I can clean up?”

Grinning at her happily, Luyne nodded quickly, “kay, Momma. Come on.”

****

In the shower, Nik finally gave in to the pain curled up in her chest. Letting the steam wash the grime off her body and sooth the aches from sex, it also washed the hot tears as they streaked down her face. Her shoulders shook with sobs and she cried.

She should have known. Everything that she knew about Amos should have been a clue. Sex with her was just that for him: sex. He desired her and responded to her desire for him, but that was as far as his feelings went. As far as his feelings were capable of going. She had gotten all she was going to get from him and it wasn't enough.

She loved him. She wasn't sure when she stopped being suspicious of him and started feeling this way, but it was inarguable. 

But he didn't love her. Cared about her? Probably. He had gone out of his way to protect her when he didn't have to. He had been kind to her. But those didn't equate to love. Nik doubted he was even capable of the emotion. And stupid, stupid, she had fallen in love with him despite that.

The steam timed out and she slid down the wet wall to sit on the shiny tiles. Pulling her knees to her chest, she rested her head on them and sat there until the chill drove her out.

****

Later, during the night cycle of the station, Maggie and Nik sat in the main room after Luyne and Lucky were asleep.

“Ok, Niki girl,” Maggie put down the file she had been working on. “You've been moping around since you got back. What's going on?”

“I haven't been moping,” she protested.

She had spent the afternoon playing with Luyne and listening to Lucky tell her about his first day as an apprentice. All in all, Nik thought she had done a good job of ignoring the ache in her chest.

“Uh-huh,” Maggie grunted. “You tried to hide it, but I caught the sad looks and sighs.”

She flushed a deep red and refused to meet Maggie's eyes. “I had sex with Amos. That's why I was so long.”

“Well,” Maggie drug out the word. “And?”

“It was amazing.”

“Yeah, good sex is like that.”

“But...,”

“What?”

“I think I'm in love with him,” Nik blurted before she lost her nerve to admit her feelings.

Maggie was quiet for a bit, waiting on her to continue.

“I don't think he's in love with me,” Nik finished miserably.

Maggie made a tutting noise and got up from the desk and came over to sink down beside her. Reaching out, she patted Nik's hand.

“What makes you say that? Did he tell you?”

“He didn't have to.” She turned to look at the woman. “I don't think he is capable of loving someone.”

Maggie thought about it before answering. “What are you going to do?”

“I don't know,” Nik whispered, her head down and shoulders hunched.

“Child,” Maggie patted her hand again, “getting your heart broken is all part of living. Almost everybody has had it happen to them at least once. Believe it or not, this feeling will pass and you will find someone else.”

Her assurance didn't help the pain inside Nik. She couldn't imagine anything feeling the huge empty hole inside her at that moment.

“Niki, girl, have I ever told you about my first love?”

“No.”

“Petra was beautiful inside and out. When she entered a room, she filled it with her light. Everyone loved her, but me, I fell IN love with her. We worked together for months with me pining for her at a distance. Oh, I was so young and infatuated with her. I built elaborate fantasies about our life together. But I was too afraid to approach her and tell her how I felt.”

Her interest piqued, Nik asked, “what happened?”

“We were both invited to a party and I had a little too much to drink, so I finally got up the nerve to approach her. I professed my love for her and kissed her.”

“What did she do?”

“She pushed me away and laughed. She told me that she wasn't interested in women. It broke my heart. I was so embarrassed. I cried for the next two days. The next week, I couldn't make myself go to work. I ended up quitting and getting a job at another clinic.”

“Oh, no. That's awful.”

Maggie smiled and patted her hand again, “that's where I met the love of my life, my Roger. We married less than a year later, then left Luna to travel to Tycho to help set up the medical bay there.”

“Oh.”

“You see, I felt just like you do right now. But I got over it and found love again. And this time my love was returned. Love, like everything else in life, takes perseverance. You can't give up if you fail the first time. Or even the second or third times. You have to keep trying until you succeed.”

“You might feel like you will never get over the hurt you are feeling and the more you dwell on it, the longer it will hurt. I'm not saying you shouldn't hurt. Just like a physical wound, it will heal. It may or may not leave a scar. But it will heal and you will be okay again.”

Nik leaned against her shoulder, “I'm glad I have you, Maggie.”

“Niki girl, you have all of us. That's what families are for.”

Maggie's words of assurance helped ease some of the heaviness in her chest, but she was still a long way from okay. At least now, though, she had faith that she would get over it eventually.

****

A week passed without Nik seeing Amos, but the ache didn't fade.

Naomi had been true to her word. The maintenance manager of the station, Moi Vars, had summoned her to his office the next day. Despite Naomi's endorsement, he was skeptical of her abilities, but he was willing to take her on a trial basis. Three days later, she became a permanent member of his department with full pay. To celebrate, the handful of belters that had worked with her so far took her out to a popular bar for drinks and dancing.

If ever there was a reason to wear the colorful outfit Amos had bought for her, this was it, but Nik hesitated. Standing at her wardrobe cabinet, she held the shirt up, debating.

“That's a pretty color. It'll look good on you,” Maggie told her from the doorway.

“Ya, I know.”

Sighing, she folded it up to return it to the drawer.

“Why aren't you going to wear it then?”

Nik ducked her head so she wouldn't have to meet Maggie's discerning gaze. 

“He bought it for me,” she said softly.

“Hum,” Maggie hummed and crossed the space to stand by her. “The Roci's still docked.”

Maggie didn't have to tell her that; she knew it all too well. Despite telling herself it wasn't her business, she checked to dock logs every day.

“Child, you need to at least talk to him before he leaves.”

Nik slammed the drawer shut, “it wouldn't change anything.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But it might give you some closure so you can move on.”

She turned to her friend, “I don't know what I would say.”

“The truth is always a good place to start.”

When Nik didn't answer, Maggie patted her on the shoulder, “just think about it, okay?”

“Kay,” she agreed. Thinking about it wouldn't hurt, right?

“Now,” Maggie grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the room, “we got to find you something to wear.”

“No, Maggie,” Nik pulled free. “This is stupid. We don't have the money to spend on clothes. I have a perfectly good outfit to wear and I am going to wear it.”

“You sure? I have a little stashed away.”

“And you need to keep it for something more important. It's just clothes. And it's not like he will even see me wearing it.”


	37. Chapter 37

Sitting at the table in the middle of the bar, with her co-workers gathered around, Nik forced a smile and took a tentative sip of her drink. Between the dark of the bar, the flashing lights, the loud thrumming music, and the raised voices of those around, she was feeling overwhelmed, she had been there for a while and this was her second drink and her head was starting to swim. The three shots her comrades had urged her to drink with them didn't help.

“Hey, Nik!” she jumped when Bo-Jon yelled in her ear and grabbed her arm. “Da adewu de im tuut! Wanna dance?” 

Looking at the crowded dance floor, she swallowed down her panic.

“Ya, kay.”

She let him pull her along behind him to the small area that passed for the dance floor. Once there, he didn't stop on the edge, but pushed his way into the heart of the crowd. As bodies closed in around Nik, all of them towering over her, her heart raced. Already flushed from the alcohol in her system, the heat on the floor made her uncomfortably warm. Bo-Jon stopped and pulled her against him as he gyrated to the music.

There didn't seem to be much of an art to the dancing, just jumping around and wiggling your body to the rhythm of the music. Feeling disconnected from her body and isolated despite the crush of bodies around her, she let the music flow through her and moved with it. Lifting her arms and waving them she twirled in a circle, closing her eyes and just following what her body wanted to do. This isn't so bad, she thought.

She was jostled roughly from behind and stumbled against Bo-Jon, who wrapped his arms around her and spun her around, making her world tip wildly. Nik pushed against his chest and opened her eyes. The face in front of her wasn't Bo-Jon. The unknown man didn't release her, instead pulling her closer and spinning them again. Swallowing back the bile rising in her throat, she pushed harder against him and kicked him in the shin. With a curse, he abruptly released her and shoved her away. Stumbling back, off-balanced, she landed hard on the floor.

The crowd closed around her and a foot came down on her hand before she could snatch it out of the way. She gave a little scream as her bones cracked, but it was lost in the music. A pair of hands grabbed her under the arms and heaved her off the floor and steered her towards the edge of the dance floor.

“You kay?” a woman she didn't know asked her as they broke free of the dancers.

Taking a deep breath to tamp down her panic, she smiled weakly, “ya, I'm gut. Taki.”

“Are you here with someone?”

“Ya,” she pointed without looking, “there.”

“Kay,” the woman frowned, unconvinced. 

“I'm gut. Taki,” Nik told her again and turned away from her.

With another glance at Nik, the woman decided it wasn't her problem and returned to the dance floor, leaving her alone. She looked around to find her friends, but moving her head made the world spin alarmingly and she was dangerously close to vomiting. She needed to get out of the hot, loud, and crowded bar.

Weaving precariously, she pushed through the crowd to the exit, finally stepping out into the open corridor. This time of the station's night, there should have been few people out, but this area had other bars, so there were more people milling around in the corridor. The music from them blending together in an disconcerting blend of warring tunes and beats. Still fighting the urge to purge the alcohol out of her stomach, Nik stumbled away from the noise into the darkened corridors leading deeper into the station.

The floor tilted as her balance failed, she braced herself on the wall of the corridor, flinching as her injured hand took her weight.

“Sabaka,” she hissed, cradling her hand to her chest. It might not be broken, but it was definitely bruised and throbbed. It was going to hurt like hell when she sobered up.

Finding a dark alcove well away from the hubbub of the bars, she leaned back against the wall and sank slowly to the floor. Laying her head on her knees, Nik took deep breaths to stop the rolling of her stomach and waited for the station to stop rotating around her. Not only was she feeling bad from drinking more alcohol than she could handle, she was embarrassed. Her first time out at a bar with her new mates in her new life and she had made a fool of herself. Tears of self-pity spilled out of her eyes and her breath caught as she stifled a sob.

She missed the crew of the Roci and their closeness that bonded them together as a family. More than that, she missed Amos and his quiet presence in her life. Over the last week, she had tried to overcome the pain she felt whenever she thought about him. Even when she slept, she couldn't escape. Her dreams all week were filled with him. Not all of them were filled with erotic images, but she woke up more mornings than not with an empty ache between her legs.

Despite Maggie's advice, she had not had the courage to seek him out and tell him how she felt. She still had not made up her mind to even do so, finding it easier to ignore the problem.

Roughly wiping her eyes with her sleeve, Nik spied a rip in one of the knees of her pants. Biting her lip, she probed it with her good hand. The supple, dark purple material sported a tear about five centimeters long, baring a raw scuff mark on her skin under it that oozed clear fluid. The sob that she had stifled escaped and her shoulders shook as she sobbed over the rip and everything she had been avoiding.

“Hey.”

Head buried in her arms while she sobbed and her ears ringing as they recovered from the noisy assault of the club music, she hadn't heard or seen anyone approach.

“Hey,” a big hand landed on her shoulder and gave her a little shake.

Squeaking in surprise, she blinked trying to focus through the moisture in her eyes. Crouching in front of her was the subject of her misery, concern written on his face as he surveyed her. Unlike most people, he didn't ask if she was okay; her tear-streaked face and red eyes surely told him more than any words.

“Come on,” he stood and pulled her carefully to her feet then held her steady as she swayed. 

Her stomach rolled at the motion and turning away from him, Nik bent over and vomited on the floor. Behind her, Amos blocked the view of anyone that happened to walk by. When her stomach was empty, she leaned her head against the wall, unwilling to turn around.

“You done?”

“Give me a minute,” she answered, her voice hoarse from the burning acidic contents of stomach.

“Here.”

A rag was shoved under her face. Grabbing it, she wiped her mouth.

“Taki.”

“Can you walk?”

“I think so,” she told him, but she wasn't sure, afraid her stomach might rebel at more movement.

Taking her by the shoulders, Amos guided her out of the alcove and down the corridor. Her legs were unsteady under her and didn't want to respond to commands from her brain. Without a word, he just swept her up in his arms and carried her.

“Don't puke on me.”

“No promises,” she muttered into his shirt.

Despite her misgivings, the gentle sway of his gait was soothing as long as she kept her eyes open. She was surprised when he turned away from the dock section where she knew the Roci was berthed. She pushed away from him to look around better.

“Where are we going?”

“I got a room,” he answered briefly.

Of course he did, she thought. It would be hard to entertain prostitutes on the ship. Leaning her head back against his chest, she kept her thoughts to herself.

The room he rented in a hostel wasn't far from the entertainment sector and took only moments to reach. They passed more people than she expected during the short walk, a few of them giving the pair curious looks. 

In his room, he didn't put her down immediately. Striding across the room, he deposited her in a comfortable chair pulled out from a table. Remembering the last table and chair they had shared, she was glad her face was already flushed from drinking too much.

“Drink this,” he thrust a bottle into her hand.

Taking it in her good hand, she raised it to her lips and took a sip. Water. Tipping the bottle up, she took several long swallows.

“Not too much at once. Give your stomach a chance to settle between drinks.”

“Kay,” she said, setting the bottle on the table.

Amos crouched in front of her and held out his hand, “let's see that hand.”

“What?” she blinked up at him. She was sure she hadn't told him anything about her hand.

“You've been holding it against your chest.”

Oh.

She held it out gingerly, prepared for pain as he reached for it, but his touch was gentle as he turned it over to expose the bruising on her knuckles. 

“Can you move your fingers?”

Cautiously, she wiggled them, wincing at the pain it caused.

“I don't think it's broken, just bruised,” he grunted. “It's going to hurt like hell in the morning. You should get a splint on it.”

She pulled it back to her chest protectively when he released it and stood. As he moved around the room, Nik took a deep breath. If she was going to follow Maggie's advice this was her chance.

“Amos?” she started tentatively.

Digging through his bag, he didn't look up, “yeah?”

Unnerved, she swallowed, “I need to tell you something.”

Finding what he was looking for, he came back over to her and held out his hand, “here, take these. They'll help with the pain.”

Nik took the two pills from him, but didn't take them.

He grabbed the bottle of water off the table and held it out to her, shaking it to get her attention. With a huff, she took it and used it to take the two pills. Setting it back on the table, she tried again.

“Amos, I'm trying to talk to you.”

“I'm listening,” he said as he turned away.

“Amos,” she snapped. “Just stop and look at me for a minute.”

Slowly, he turned back to her, giving her all of his intense attention. There was a tension in his body that she had only seen on a few occasions. The first time was when he confronted her two attackers on Tycho. This conversation wasn't going the way she had envisioned it and she considered letting it drop. But Maggie was right; she needed to do this.

“I love you,” she blurted before she could talk herself out of it.

“Okay.”

Taken aback by his noncommittal reply to her soul-baring revelation, she wasn't sure what to say next.

“Okay?” she echoed. “Okay? I just told you that I love you and all you can say is 'okay'?”

“What do you want me to say?” he frowned, genuinely confused.

“I don't know,” she huffed in exasperation. “Something more than that, though.”

Amos ran his hand through his hair, then pulled the other chair over and sat down, his knees inches away from hers.

“When I was still on Earth, there was this stray dog that hung out in the neighborhood. It was a big dog that had obviously been used in dog fights. You know, all scarred up, one ear missing. This guy I knew decided he wanted it. For weeks, Robbie fed it scraps. He found out where it was sleeping and gave it an old blanket. The dog got to where it would greet him, wagging its tail. So Robbie thought he was getting through to it. One day, he tried to pet it after he fed it. Damn dog nearly tore his hand off.”

Not sure where he was going with the story, Nik gasped, “what happened?”

Amos shrugged, “don't know. I think it ran off after Robbie stopped feeding it.”

What the hell? Nik thought.

“The thing is, no mattered what Robbie wanted, that dog was a fighter, not a pet. Despite all his efforts all he got out of it was a lot of scars.”

She gave a harsh laugh, “I supposed you're supposed to be that dog?”

He shrugged again, “Maybe. But I can't give you what you want.”

“I know that,” she said softly.

“Then why tell me?”

“Because knowing and knowing,” she emphasized the second, “are two different things. I had to hear it from you for it to be real.”

He frowned, not understanding.

“It's okay, Amos. I don't expect you to understand. It took me a while to get it,” she smiled slightly. “I'm still glad I met you. Do you think we can still be friends?”

Another frown, “okay. Does this mean we can't fuck anymore?”

Nik laughed for real this time. Typical Amos. But as much as she wanted to crawl onto his lap and kiss him until she couldn't think anymore, it was going to be hard enough to get over being in love with him without complicating it with intimacy.

“I don't think that would be a good idea.”

He shrugged, “okay.”

And to him it was that simple. Nik wished it could be that simple for her. With a pang of sadness, she wondered what it would be like to go through life not being able to feel like other people. Sure, he couldn't feel despair or depression, but to not be able to love others? What an empty life that would be.

Pushing his chair back, Amos stood, “are you okay to go back to your place?”

Over the last few minutes, the room had stopped spinning and her stomach had settled down so she no longer felt like throwing up.

“Ya, I'm feeling better.”

“Come on, I'll walk you back.”

They walked back to the rooms she shared with her family in comfortable silence. At the door, Amos bid her goodnight and turned to leave.

Nik grabbed his arm, “wait.”

When he turned back to her, she rose up on her toes and kissed him softly on the lips.

“Thank you for everything.”

With a nod, Amos turned and walked back the way they had come. Nik waited until she couldn't see him anymore to open the door and go inside, feeling better than she had for a while.

It was time to get on with her new life.

Epilogue

Six months later, Nik, Maggie and Luyne waited anxiously outside the docks. Luyne bounced on the balls of her feet with nervous energy.

“Think he brought me something?” she chirped. “I hope he brought me something.”

“We don't know if he got to go down to the colony, Luyne, so don't be disappointed if he didn't,” Nik told the child.

“Mia said that they all get a chance to go down if they can and want to,” she informed Nik with surety.

In the past months, Nik had enrolled Luyne in school with other children her age and she had made several friends. The girl had bloomed with confidence. Being a station rat on Tycho earned Luyne a measure of awe from the others and she was their defacto leader. She and her group of friends were absolute terrors as they ran loose on the station whenever they could escape the watchful eyes of adults. No area on the station was safe from their curiosity and the station's crew had grown used to their comings and goings and helped keep a watch over them.

“Here they come!” she hopped up and down as the doors opened and a handful of belters came through. The girl rushed forward, shoving through the adults until she reached her target.

“Lucky!” she squealed as she threw herself at him.

Poor Lucky had to drop his bag in order to catch the girl, lifting her up into a hug. Since they had arrived at Medina, he had a growth spurt and had added several centimeters of height. Still lanky in build, he looked a lot like the other belters around them.

With knowing looks and friendly comments, the rest of the crew continued through the concourse to their families waiting to greet them, while Lucky awkwardly picked up his bag with one hand while holding Luyne with the other and joined Nik and Maggie.

“Welcome back, kiddo,” Maggied greeted him warmly and wrapped him in a hug.

Lucky had left two months ago on his first flight off the station as an apprentice pilot. After the alien ships had come through from the system that the crew of the Roci had fled to while escaping the MCRN, the system had been thoroughly explored. Since they were the first through, Holden and the others were allowed to name the system. They had settled on naming it after Detective Miller and the largest habitable planet Josephus. The first colony landed within weeks, changing their destination from a less preferable system to the new Miller system.

“Did you bring me anything?” Luyne was not going to be distracted.

“What?” Lucky looked at her with a frown. “I'm a busy bosmang. I don't got time to buy souvenirs for my little sésata.”

Luyne's lip quivered and he broke out in a laugh, “I'd never forget you, Mouse!”

He set the girl on her feet and dug through his bag, pulling out a small object wrapped in brown cellulose, “here.”

Luyne snatched it from him and unwrapped it with glee. 

“It's so pretty!” she squealed again.

“Let's see it,” Nik turned her by her shoulder so she and Maggie could see what she held.

It was a necklace made of smooth round beads that looked like clear glass, but when she looked closer in the heart of each bead was a spot that glowed with a light of its own. Each of the five beads glowed with a different color from pink to purple to blue.

“The settlers call them glow stones,” Lucky explained. “They're smooth crystals bonded with different minerals that absorb light and refract a single wavelength back, but amplified. The smaller ones with less amplification are being sold as jewelry, but they are experimenting with using bigger ones with higher amplification factors as power sources or lasers.”

“They're beautiful,” Maggie told him and Nik agreed.

“I found something for you too,” he grinned and held out another package to Maggie.

She unwrapped it to find a figurine carved from the crystal with a purple glow. The figuring resembled some kind of bird, but it had four wings instead of two and had two little horns.

“That's one of the flying creatures on the planet. They're about this big.” He held his hands about a half-meter apart, “and sound like crying babies.”

“It's lovely,” Maggie gave him another hug. “Thank you.”

Lucky looked at Nik with his bright eyes, “I didn't forget you, Nik.”

He handed her a package smaller than the others. Unwrapping it, Nik found a single round crystal, the size of a marble. The light from the inside was a dark silver, almost gray and it was strung on simple cord.

His face bright red, Lucky smiled shyly, “I thought you might like a replacement for the other one. You know, the one with...,”

“I know,” Nik cut him off quickly. “It's perfect, Lucky. I love it.” 

She looped the cord over her head and let the crystal settle just over her breast bone. It was perfect. The perfect symbol for new beginnings.

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that some of you, gentle readers, are disappointed by this ending. If I'm being honest, so am I. But when it came down to it, with Amos there was no other possible ending. He is a true sociopath in the books and show, though I'm starting to see the show soften him up a bit. He knows that there is something wrong with him and that's why he sticks with Naomi and Holden. They keep him from being something truly monstrous and he knows it.
> 
> That being said, this has been my favorite story to write and I am sad to see it end. I hope all of you enjoyed it as much as I did. Sending all of you positive thoughts. Until next time, farewell.


End file.
